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Millions of people are managing anxiety every day. They’re managing it by living with it while going about their day to day life. Anxiety affects their happiness and their quality of life, and every once in a while that anxiety may interfere with their ability to enjoy the activities they used to enjoy. Those with anxiety may want to cure it forever, but overall they’re getting by even if their anxiety doesn’t go away.

In some cases, however, that anxiety can turn to something even worse: depression (1). For some the depression may occur only occasionally when the person experiences some severe anxiety. For others, the depression can become constant – something that doesn’t go away. Anxiety is a very serious disorder, but when anxiety leads to depression, it becomes even more worrisome.

Why Does Anxiety Cause Depression?

Depression is a subjective feeling, and one that may have different causes for different people (2). Yet the following are the most common reasons that anxiety may lead to depression:

• Long Term Stress – Anxiety is essentially long term stress, and long term stress can change your brain chemistry, leading to feelings of depression or sadness.
• Hurt Relationships – Anxiety can make holding onto a relationship much harder. Yet relationships are important for happiness, so depression may be the result.
• Helplessness – Anxiety and anxiety attacks may cause feelings of helplessness, or a complete loss of control, and those experiences may also lead to depression.

Anxiety can cause a feeling of giving up as well, and while anxiety – just like depression – can always be cured, there is no denying that those feelings can be very hurtful over an extended period of time.

Next Steps With Anxiety and Depression

If you feel that your anxiety has turned into depression, getting help right away is incredibly important. Depression has a way of misleading the mind to make you feel like there is nothing you can do – but there is always something you can do, and numerous studies have confirmed successful depression cures. A trained expert is your best bet for curing depression. In the meantime, start the following:

• Exercise – You should immediately start exercising. Exercising releases chemicals in your brain that improve mood and are uplifting. In many ways they’re a natural depression and anxiety cure that can immediately have an impact on your day to day life.
• Stay Active – Both anxiety and depression lead to moping behaviors. Don’t give in. Try your best to keep yourself as busy as possible all the time. It may be tiring, but it will keep you out of your own thoughts, which is an important part of fighting these symptoms.
• Join Groups – Keeping yourself accountable with people that are dedicated to your well being can be incredibly advantageous – and you may even find a few new friends as a result. Join any support groups or anxiety help groups to learn coping tips and meet like minded people.
• Don’t Self-Medicate – Never fall for any self-medication strategies. They may or may not work anyway, but even if they do, they can make it harder for you to reduce your anxiety and depression later without them.
• Keep At It Every Day – Make sure that you’re also dedicated to reducing your anxiety and depression. Don’t let it be something that you only take seriously once in a while. Both anxiety and depression require major life changes, and only with those life changes can you expect results.

The truth is that all mental health problems are curable. Curing them takes time and dedication, but rest assured that you can find relief from not only your depression, but your anxiety as well.

About the Author: Ryan Rivera suffered from severe anxiety that in some stages led to depression. He writes about anxiety and depression at www.calmclinic.com.

(1) Zinbarg, Richard E., et al. “The DSM-IV field trial for mixed anxiety-depression.” The American journal of psychiatry (1994).
(2) Schoevers, R. A., et al. “Comorbidity and risk-patterns of depression, generalised anxiety disorder and mixed anxiety-depression in later life: results from the AMSTEL study.” International journal of geriatric psychiatry 18.11 (2003): 994-1001.