Surprising Similarities Between Depression and Anxiety

SciShow Psych host Brit Garner explains the surprising similarities between depression and anxiety despite the fact that they feel vastly different from each other. Garner looks at the symptoms, the brain chemistry behind both conditions, how they can simultaneously exist, why medication, particularly SSRI‘s work well for both anxiety and depression and how the fight-flight-freeze instinct plays a big role in how finding these commonalities.

Fight or flight kicks in when you’re confronted with something your mind sees as a threat, and it automatically prepares you to either fight or run away. And when you think about it…anxiety and depression might just be slightly different ways of expressing the same flight response: helplessness or hopelessness. And maybe that’s part of why they so often go together.