Melancholy is not a state to be taken lightly. Depression affects more than 20 million Americans and also the countless friends, family, and other loved ones who support them. You can be alerted by understanding depression risk factors to circumstances that might allow you to be prone to grow the illness or help if you are going through it, you better understand the disorder.

Melancholy Risk Factors: Genetics and Environment

Of all the melancholy risk factors, among the greatest is genetics, said Donald P. Hall, MD, a psychiatrist and writer of Breaking Through Depression. “Genetic threats inherited from parents account for 50 percent of the danger of developing depression,” Dr. Hall said. “If among your parents endured with depressive illness, your own risk of depression doubles.”

“The other 50 percent of danger for depression comes from external pressure,” added Dr. Hall. “The most typical nerve-racking occasion leading to depression and suicide is the break up of a loving relationship. Other stressful events range from the death of a young child, loss of employment, or divorce.”

Gender as a Depression Risk Factor

As women seem more likely to be affected than men, your gender may play a role in your melancholy danger, too. “The danger of developing depression at some time in our lives is 10 percent for men and 20 percent for women,” said Hall. “Two out of 10 women you know will develop clinical depression sooner or later within their lives.” Hall also considered that, generally speaking, women are more sensitive than men when relationship problems occur. “Societal bond and maternal instincts lead girls to value intimate relationships more deeply than men. Women tend to feel the loss more acutely than guys, when their kids encounter hardships or relationships finish. These nerve-racking experiences can activate the ‘chemical cascade’ and lead to depression.”

Linda Carman Copel, PhD, a psychotherapist and professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia, Pa., saw another reason why girls are depressed more often than men. “Depression occurs in both sexes, but men delay seeking treatment,” Copel said. “Often in my own practice, guys wait and are likely to self-medicate with alcohol; become furious, competitive, and also violent to people and also to things in their surroundings; participate in distracting behaviour; or become involved with high-risk, reckless behaviours before the conduct not works for them.”

Depression and Ethnic Heritage

Some studies indicate that the ethnic heritage could additionally play a role in depression, but the jury is still out on this. “The data regarding the prevalence of depression by race or ethnicity in the United States are at odds,” said Simon Rego, PsyD, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “Some studies suggest that particular minority groups like African-Americans have higher rates of depression, while other studies suggest the speeds are about the same.”

The reason that some racial groups may have higher rates of depression than others could be associated than their ethnic heritage, said Rego. “Some experts indicate that instead of race or ethnicity per se, a more important determining factor is one which is unfortunately frequently tied to race: poverty.” Rego added that this really is often due to the extra pressures faced by those with fiscal difficulties.

David Sack, MD, CEO of Assurances Treatment Facilities in California and author of more than 50 journal articles on melancholy, added one other crucial risk factor for depression: “Misuse of drugs and alcohol raises the dangers of becoming depressed,” Dr. Sack said. “This might be due to the changes in brain chemistry that drugs of abuse cause, along with the multitude of social, occupational, and interpersonal conditions that occur when someone becomes hooked.”

In case you believe you are in danger of depression or are depressed, do not wait to get help. Talk to your doctor and discuss potential courses of treatment to deal with your state.