A healthy lifestyle that involves moderate alcohol consumption, a healthy diet, regular physical activity, healthy sleep and frequent social connection, while avoiding smoking and too much sedentary behaviour, reduces the risk of depression, new research has found.
Scientists have worked out why common anti-depressants cause around a half of users to feel emotionally ‘blunted’. In a study published today, they show that the drugs affect reinforcement learning, an important behavioural process that allows us to learn from our environment.