Understanding depression and anxiety

This free course, Understanding depression and anxiety, explores the causes of these mental health issues, with a particular focus on stress. You will consider some risk and causal factors for some depression and anxiety disorders, and learn about the biology and psychology behind them.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1  Understanding the role of stress
• 1  Understanding the role of stress
• 1.1  What do we mean by stress?
• 1.2  Recent life events and stress
• 1.3  Early life events and stress
• 1.4  Cognition, appraisal and stress
• 1.5  Temperament, personality and heritability
• 1.6 Inheritance of temperament
• 1.7 Familial inheritance and heritability in humans
• 2  Stress and the brain
• 2  Stress and the brain
• 2.1 The operation and control of the HPA axis
• 2.2 Relating stress and depression biologically
• 2.3 Effects on the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
• 2.4 Relating stress and anxiety biologically
• 2.5 The amygdala and generalised anxiety disorder
• 3  The life cycle model of stress
• 3  The life cycle model of stress
• 3.1 Adaptive value of developmental programming of stress
• 4  Insights from antidepressants
• 4  Insights from antidepressants
• 4.1  The monoamine hypothesis of mood disorders
• 4.2 Evidence for the monoamine hypothesis
• 4.3 Tryptophan depletion experiments
• 4.4  The neurotrophic hypothesis of mood disorders
• 4.5 Depression and levels of BDNF
• 4.6 Stress, depression and neurogenesis in the hippocampus
• 4.7 Antidepressants, BDNF levels and neurogenesis in the hippocampus
• 5  The network hypothesis of mood disorders
• 5  The network hypothesis of mood disorders
• 6  Genes and environment: bringing it all together
• 6  Genes and environment: bringing it all together
• 6.1  The serotonin transporter gene and vulnerability to stressful life events
• 6.2  Genes, environment and development
• 6.3 Epigenetic effects and human mental disorders
• Conclusion
• References
• Acknowledgements