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Additionally, there are medications that seem to have caused depression in some people – or at least symptoms that look like depression: certain asthma medications, certain blood pressure medications, certain hepatitis medications, smoking cessation medications all seem to cause these types of symptoms in some vulnerable populations and therefore whenever you’re starting a new medication, if you are struggling from depression, it’s a good idea to run the new medication by your doctor to make sure that there’s nothing that would require additional monitoring. Other biological contributors to depression that we think about are substance abuse and really addictions of any sort: alcohol, recreational drugs, gambling addiction, sex addiction – all of these can contribute to symptoms of depression in many individuals and have to be very thoroughly considered in the diagnosis. Psychological factors also have to be considered as potential contributors to depression, so people who tend to think in all or nothing terms (for example: everything is all good or everything is all bad) will often be more subject to depression. People with low self-esteem are at a significantly higher risk of depression. People who don’t deal with adversity or don’t have as much of a coping system may be at higher risk for depression than many others.
