How Depression Deepens Memory Loss and Affects Daily Life

4 Feb, 2025 15:59 IST|Sakshi Post

It’s often considered that people who struggle with prolonged depression have difficulty recalling incidents from the past. There have been studies to prove the correlation between depression and memory loss. A person struggling with depression can easily feel overwhelmed to do daily activities. The reason behind this is depression will affect cognitive functions that contribute to memory, information processing, etc.,

In this, we will dive deep into why depressed individuals tend to experience memory loss from time to time. 

When someone goes through a depressive episode, the body goes into a stress response and releases a hormone called cortisol. Excessive cortisol suppresses the growth of new cells in the hippocampus and can cause it to shrink as well. 

The hippocampus is crucial to forming memories and its shrinkage owing to heightened cortisol suggests how memory loss is directly linked to depression. 

One of the major problems associated with depression is lack of sleep. Most individuals struggling with depression complain about changes in sleep habits. Sleep disruptions can affect cognitive function. The reason for this is depression causes an imbalance in neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters act as messengers that carry signals from one neuron to another inside the brain and let the brain function.

Getting little or too much sleep (owing to depression) affects cognitive function, especially visual memory and response time. The optimal amount of sleep time for an individual ranges from 7 to 9 hours. 

The aforementioned reasons provide enough proof of how depression can have a significant impact on an individual’s memory. That being said, it’s pertinent to also understand that depression and dementia are completely unrelated. 

Dementia in individuals will cause changes in mood and behavior similar to depression. But, persons with neurodegenerative dementia experience irreversible death of brain cells whereas depression turns the brain cells to be less active. These less active cells could still be reactivated. It's because of this similarity that depression is often called “Pseudo-dementia”. 

If you’ve been experiencing depression symptoms that include memory loss, talk to your doctor. They may recommend a treatment option as a more advanced method to take mental health seriously. 





 

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