You might think that alcohol takes the edge off the blues, or that it makes them worse, but a new study has found that alcohol is often the direct cause of bouts of depression. According to the study, which was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, alcohol abuse and the disease of alcoholism was linked to a third of depressive episodes, which were different to depressive episodes caused by other life events.
Though it’s been established than heavy drinking can make temporary depression worse, even though many people with alcohol use disorders use alcohol to relieve depression, according to lead researcher Marc A. Schuckit, MD, of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ‘I don’t know that the average person realizes that heavy drinking can induce mood problems.’
For the study, which lasted 30 years, researchers evaluated nearly 400 men who were 18 years old at the outset, and found that roughly half were at increased risk for drinking problems because their fathers were alcoholics. 41% of the men with alcoholic fathers developed alcohol abuse or alcoholism, and nearly 20% of these participants’ mental health suffered at least one bout of major depression. For these men, almost one third of those major depressive episodes were seen only while they were drinking heavily, and not depression caused by other life events. According to the journal, if alcohol is the cause of depression, it could likely disappear with abstinence.
Schuckit explained that doctors may be unaware of it, but they need to pay close attention to this problem, because when heavy drinking causes your mental wellbeing to decrease in this way, you have a different prognosis and should be treated much differently from depression not tied to drinking. ‘Although the symptoms of independent and substance-induced depressions can be identical, if the sadness develops in the context of heavy drinking, the symptoms are likely to lift within several weeks to a month of abstinence and rarely require antidepressants to go away,’ he said.
He continued, ‘It’s important for doctors to consider alcohol use disorders as a possible cause of patients’ depression symptoms,’ rather than simply ‘reaching for the prescription pad and recommending an antidepressant.’ However, before your doctor can properly diagnose how your wellness has become affected by depression, you need to be forthcoming with information about alcohol use.
Comments are closed.