Genetic Link Between Stress and Depression

In this article, it discusses how stress had a genetic link with depression. Depression is a major disorder that affects many people in America. There was a study done in the Journal Archives of General Psychiatry that implies that there is a genetic link between stress and depression. The gene that causes the formation of a small peptide in our brains is called Neuropeptide Y. The way that stress is related is that there is something in the bloodstream and spinal fluid that relates to how resilient we are to life’s stress. The more Neuropeptide Y, the more resilient we are to life’s stresses. So they did tests at the University of Michigan to test whether people that had different variations of the Neuropeptide Y gene scored differently in a few tests linked to depression and stress. The scientist founds out some promising results from running tests with different types of people in the experiment.

The evidence in this experiment does have some valid points but there are still more test to be done to make sure that this is a relative correlation. This was just a step in the right direction, but more experiments are required to see if the gene Neuropeptide Y is a correct gene to use to measure peoples stress levels and hoe depressive actions and thoughts effect the gene. Intuitively, the more stress someone possesses the more depressive their behavior could become but this is science so anything is possible.