Research Suggest That Depression Can Be Contagious And Being Around Someone Who Has It Could Impact Your Mood
We know that illnesses like the flu or strep throat can be easily spread through droplets in the air or other means, but can mental health conditions like depression be “caught” from someone else?
Research suggests that depression can be contagious in a way. It may not work like a virus, but being around someone with depression could impact your mood and mindset.
Among adolescents, mental health disorders can be “socially transmitted,” according to an observational study. The finding makes some sense.
For example, when someone is doubled over with laughter, it might make you laugh, too. The opposite is also true. Seeing a friend in emotional pain can cause you to feel sad.
For over 30 years, researchers have looked into whether mental health disorders can be brought on by our social environment. Most of the studies had mixed results on the extent to which mental health issues spread within social networks.
The most recent study, which was conducted by researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland and other institutions, analyzed data on 713,809 Finnish citizens born between 1985 and 1997.
The research team identified students diagnosed with a mental disorder by the time they were in ninth grade. They tracked the rest of their peers for any later diagnoses up to the end of 2019.
The team found that ninth-grade students with more than one classmate diagnosed with a mental health disorder had a five percent greater risk of developing a mental illness in the following years compared to students who had classmates without diagnoses.
The risk was especially high in the year right after exposure. Students with one diagnosed classmate were nine percent more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis of their own.
Drazen – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person – pictured above a depressed woman sits alone in her bedroom
Meanwhile, students with more than one diagnosed classmate were 18 percent more likely to receive a diagnosis. The greatest risk was associated with developing anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and eating disorders.
An increased risk was observed after controlling for factors like class size, parental mental health, and unemployment rates in the area.
Although the researchers took neighborhood employment rates and education levels into account, it’s possible that they still didn’t consider other influential factors in their study. The biggest strength of the study was that the research subjects did not choose their social networks, eliminating another potential influence.
“In our study, we mitigated this self-selection bias by using school classes as proxies for social networks,” said Jussi Alho, the lead author of the study.
“As institutionally imposed social networks, school classes are well suited to research, as they are typically not formed endogenously by individuals selecting similar others as classmates.
Moreover, school classes are arguably among the most significant peer networks during childhood and adolescence, given the substantial time spent together with classmates.”
The researchers did not find any “significant overall contagion of mental health.” Only small contagion effects were seen for specific mental health measures like depression, anxiety, and general psychological distress.
Alho does admit that ruling out all potential influences cannot be done. So, it’s hard to tell if mental health issues are being passed around people in social networks or if it simply looks that way due to other unknown factors.
Growing public awareness among both patients and clinicians may have something to do with it. Or, changing diagnostic criteria and more access to treatment could be making an impact as well.
Whatever the case is, it seems that mental disorders are at least becoming more of a topic of discussion, which can eventually lead to their normalization.
The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry.
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