# data[].attributes.headline
What is depression? What is retrograde amnesia? Why could these two combined cause hallucinations?

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What is depression? What is retrograde amnesia? Why could these two combined cause hallucinations?

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"Depression is a disorder over which the sufferer has no control. Some symptoms include:
~ Feelings of extreme sadness, emptiness, anxiety
~ Thoughts of hopelessness, helplessness
~ Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
~ Loss of interest in usual activities, such as hobbies, school, or work
~ Loss of appetite or overeating
~ Oversleeping or waking up usually early, and difficulty sleeping
~ Loss of concentration, difficulty remembering
~ Fatigue
~ Restlessness or irritability" - pg 12

"Retrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone is unable to recall events that occurred before the development of the amnesia, even though they may be able to encode and memorize new things that occur." - Human-Memory.net

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Since the school didn't really have a book on the topic i actually wanted to discuss (retrograde amnesia) I decided on the book that spoke about depression, since that is a minor theme in my book, but i will be discussing both topics. The whole book is centered around how this girl got into an accident; a building collapsed on her and her friends one night and she's knocked into a coma. She wakes up - the only one alive, and can't remember a single thing about that night (retrograde amnesia). Slowly but surely she gains some memories of the night back, in dreams; well - more like nightmares. Along the way she has hallucination upon hallucination which is caused by all of her stress and PTSD. Her amnesia makes it hard for her to really understand anything, she's constantly confused and frightened - especially after having hallucinations of her dead friends talking to her, following her, and staring at her in the mirror, standing where her body should be. Then towards the end of the book she starts to become very depressed. She thinks that her friends deaths were her fault somehow, and she should be punished for it. She feels as though she's alone in the world. And all she keeps asking herself is "Why can't i just be normal?"

Some examples of her retrograde amnesia:
~Pg 11:
"My eyes swept the room, and finally landed on the beside table, on the roses. They were fresh, unwilted. I wondered when Rachel brought them."
~Pg 13:
" 'I want to know everything that happened.'
'Mara-'
I recognized her placating tone and my fingers curled into fists around my sheets. She was trying to protect me but she was torturing me instead
'You have to tell me,' I begged, my throat filled with ash.
My mother looked at me with glassy eyes and a heartbroken face.
'I would if i could Mara, but you're the only one who knows.' "
~Pg 15:
"She was the first to reach me that night when my screaming woke the neighbors, and she was the one who caught me crying in my closet the next day. But it was only after she found me two days later, dazed and blinking and clutching a shard of broken mirror in my bloody hand that she insisted on getting me help."
~Pg 80:
"You couldn't see his mouth at all, with the teeming mass of flies bubbling over it and the side of the pulpy mess that had been the man's scalp. The ground under his caved in head was completely black and the stain blossomed red at the edges of his dingy wife beater. The dogs owner was dead.
Exactly as I had imagined it."

Some examples of her depression:
~Pg 383:
" 'Are you sick Mara?'
'Yes.'
'What's wrong?'
'Everything.' "
~Pg 384:
"I didn't get up for school the next day. Or the next. And there were no more nightmares, now. Which was unfortunate, because I deserved them."
~Pg 385:
"When I went to the bathroom that night, I turned on the light and looked in the mirror to see if I could find her. The husk of a girl not-named Mara stared back at me. I wondered how I would kill her."
~Pg 385:
"But I didn't want him there. Or rather, i didn't want to be there. But i wasn't about to move, so i lay in bed, facing the wall, as he began to read to me."

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The topic in real life. (Depression and retrograde amnesia) 

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The topic in real life. (Depression and retrograde amnesia) 

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"Depression is one of the most common major mood disorders and involves change's in a person's emotions, behavior, and thought patterns, changes that are strong enough to disrupt a person's usual functioning for six months or more. Depression impacts the way a person feels about himself, how he thinks, and even how he eats and sleeps. Although depression may seem like a temporary "down-in-the-dumps" mood, the individual cannot simply "cheer up" after a while."
-Page 11

"Depression may occur in the young and the old, both male and female. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, as many as 18.8 million adults in the U.S. may suffer from depression in a given year. That is 9.5% of the total population. The NIMH estimates depression affects about six to eight million women and between three and four million men."
-Page 14

"Retrograde amnesia usually follows damage to areas of the brain other than the hippocampus (the part of the brain involved in encoding new memories), because already existing long-term memories are stored in the neurons and synapses of various different brain regions." - Human-Memory.net

"Retrograde amnesia is often temporarily graded, meaning the remote memories are more easily accessible than events occurring just prior to the trauma, and the events nearest in time to the event that caused the memory loss may never be recovered. This is because the neural pathways of newer memories are not as strong as older ones that have been strengthened by years of retrieval and re-consolidation. While there is no actual cure for retrograde amnesia, "jogging" the victim's memory by exposing them to significant articles from their past will often speed the rate of recall."
- Human-Memory.net