Dr. Mohan S. Palaniswami is director of internal medicine for Aosta Health, a multimedia company that provides online health and medical content. Here he answers questions about the cause of depression.

Q:		What causes depression?
A:		It is difficult to answer the question, "what causes depression?," although it is a very good one. Much research is being done to help answer this question, and hopefully in the coming years we will have more definitive causes of depression. That said, there are several causes that most doctors and researchers believe play a role. Most agree that depression is either caused by, or at the least, mediated by the brain. Evidence to support this theory include the finding that depression appears to run in families and recent studies show that brain chemicals can be linked to depression. For years, it has also been accepted that environmental conditions play a role in depression. That is, stresses from our environment may trigger an event. These moments could take place in the past, such as events while growing up, or it may be new events, occurring today. The stressors may be one thing, or several things, or chronic daily stress.

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Q:		Why is the cause important?
A:		Knowing the cause of any condition can help doctors and researchers to treat the condition and design new research to develop more directed treatment. Knowing the cause may also help us understand ways to prevent a condition to occur, altogether.

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