Stress and Depression

Mental stress and major depressive disorder are interconnected phenomena that profoundly affect individuals’ mental and emotional well-being and present major contributors to the global healthcare burden. Mental stress, often regarded as the body’s natural response to external pressures or threats, can manifest in various forms, including acute physiological, psychological, and behavioral changes, and is influenced by psychosocial and biological factors. If experienced chronically, stress can have severe mental and physical health consequences.

Stress and depression research is one of the main foci of Prof. Gregor Hasler’s Molecular Psychiatry research group. We critically examine the effects of acute and chronic stress using various methodologies. Our efforts seek to unravel the complex interplay of genetic, environmental, and neurobiological factors underlying the onset and progression of major depressive disorder, as well as its association with important variables like psychological resilience, cognitive function, and socioeconomic factors (e.g., social status, poverty, and social integration).

Using an ongoing large cohort study, we investigate stress and depression-related pathologies with a biopsychosocial approach combining different perspectives including, but not limited to, psychiatry, neurobiology, genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, endocrinology, and social science. Due to the high degree of co-occurrence, we also examine related mental health problems like anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress. This sophisticated approach has already led us to find numerous associations between stress and depression-related mental health outcomes and non-clinical variables like moving homes in adolescence, experience of poverty, and personality traits like neuroticism.

Current Studies

The GABAGEN study is a cohort study in which we measure major depressive disorder and correlates of depression vulnerability to predict the onset and progression of major depression and other affective disorders. The study uses diverse methods including diagnostic structured clinical interviews; neuroimaging (MRI, MRS); stool sampling; genetic, epigenetic, and transcriptomic next-generation sequencing; cytokine profiling; electrocardiogram; behavioral experiments; and psychological questionnaires. Its main focus is the comparison of individuals with major depressive disorder against individuals without major depressive disorder.

Publications

Tuura, R., Buchmann, A., Ritter, C., Hase, A., Haynes, M., Noeske, R., & Hasler, G. (2023). Prefrontal Glutathione Levels in Major Depressive Disorder Are Linked to a Lack of Positive Affect. Brain Sciences, 13(10), 1475. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13101475

Kupferberg, A., & Hasler, G. (2023). The social cost of depression: Investigating the impact of impaired social emotion regulation, social cognition, and interpersonal behavior on social functioning. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 14, 100631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadr.2023.100631

Ritter, C., Buchmann, A., Müller, S., Volleberg, M., Haynes, M., Ghisleni, C., Noeske, R., Tuura, R., & Hasler, G. (2022). Evaluation of prefrontal Γ-Aminobutyric acid and glutamate levels in individuals with major depressive disorder using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. JAMA Psychiatry, 79(12), 1209. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.3384

Buchmann, A., Ritter, C., Müller, S., Haynes, M., Ghisleni, C., O’Gorman, R. L., & Hasler, G. (2022). Associations between heart rate variability, peripheral inflammatory markers and major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 304, 93–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.02.017

Ritter, C., Buchmann, A., Müller, S., Hersberger, M., Haynes, M., Ghisleni, C., Tuura, R., & Hasler, G. (2021). Cerebral perfusion in depression: Relationship to sex, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and depression severity. NeuroImage: Clinical, 32, 102840. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2021.102840

Stocker, K., Hasler, G., & Hartmann, M. (2021). Letter to the editor: Are ketamine-induced subjective bodily experiences associated with antidepressant effects? A sensation of floating and a sensation of lightness are not the same – A comment on Acevedo-Diaz et al. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 137, 454–455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.03.017

Martin‐Soelch, C., Guillod, M., Gaillard, C., Recabarren, R. E., Federspiel, A., Mueller‐Pfeiffer, C., Homan, P., Hasler, G., Schoebi, D., Horsch, A., & Gomez, P. (2021). Increased Reward-Related activation in the ventral striatum during stress exposure associated with positive affect in the daily life of young adults with a family history of depression. preliminary findings. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.563475

Other Resources

In Fall 2020, Prof. Gregor Hasler gave a TED talk about the importance and implementation of mood regulation in everyday life at the TEDx session in Écublens, Switzerland.

In his first widely acclaimed German-language book, Prof. Gregor Hasler shares his longstanding expertise in stress research around the topic of psychological resilience, which is an important mental health resource buffering against stress-related mental disorders.

Hasler, G. (2017). Resilienz: Der Wir-Faktor Gemeinsam Stress und Ängste überwinden.

In a talk at the 22^nd State of the Art Symposium of the Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Society, Prof. Gregor Hasler talked about the increase of stress symptoms in recent years as well as factors and strategies to improve psychological stress resilience.