Arthritis And Depression Are Correlated

A research was conducted in April 2019 (Delhi, India) to find the correlation between patients of arthritis and occurrence of depression, with a perspective of understanding the reasons for the high current trend towards depression. The research aimed to find the link between physical and mental health in terms of how hormones in the body that create diseases are generated and aggravated by mental health problems.

The data and the review of literature suggest that symptoms of arthritis are accompanied by the existence of symptoms of depression. A co-relation score of 0.98 was obtained using Spearman’s correlation method, which is a very high positive score.

A sample of 80 people was taken. Out of the 80 people surveyed, 40 had arthritis (target group) and 40 (control group) did not have arthritis. The results of depression found were 29/40 for arthritis and 15/40 for non -arthritis group. This meant that 29 people out of 40 people who had depression had arthritis also while 15 people out of 40 people who had depression did not have arthritis or any chronic disease. This research indicated that a person who had arthritis was twice as likely to have depression as a person who did not have arthritis. The mean (average) of the population with arthritis is 17.8(with standard deviation 10.68) and the mean score of depression in the population without arthritis is 12.2 (with standard deviation 22.3). The scores indicate that on an average, a patient with arthritis is more prone to depression than a patient who does not have arthritis. The difference in standard deviation on the two scores indicates that the deviation from the mean is approximately double in patients without arthritis than in patients with arthritis. This implies that reason for depression in patients of arthritis is more predictable as linked to the disease, while reasons for depression in patients without arthritis is more unpredictable, as being linked to several other factors.


The correlation was between pain in the body and occurrence of depression. The number of people who had arthritis and depression were almost double the number of people who did not have arthritis but had depression. The cure of arthris could be improvised by simultaneously addressing depression.

It could not be proved that a causal relationship exists between arthritis and depression in this research as there was no correlation found between higher levels of pain and higher degrees of depression. Some people who had extreme pain did report a high degree of depression. But there were other people who were virtually bed -ridden in the hospital but did not report a high degree of depression. They were mildly depressed and largely reconciled to fate.

Depression was high in cases where there was hope of change but helplessness that the change was not happening at the speed at which it was desired. For example, there was lady whose son was an alcoholic. She had got him forcibly married in the hope that he would leave substance abuse. But the problems had worsened as he refused to accept his wife. She felt helpless in joining the couple together. He did not love his wife and she was not getting pregnant.
According to the scientific theory of how neural impulses activate pain in the subconscious mind. it is proved that a physical pain in a specific organ is created by the subconscious mind by focusing on feeling helpless about the function of that specific organ for a period of seven years. For example, if you have an irritable bowel syndrome, it manifest if you have been consistently focusing on some feeling of irritability in your life and feeling helpless about it for seven years. The exact time of manifestation can vary but it is prolonged exposure to a specific negative emotion which creates a specific illness in the body.
There was another lady whose children were settled abroad and she could not meet them. She had pain in the knee joint and moderate depression. This again was a situation where she could not join her children. Helpless in feeling that you are unable to join two segments together as this lady was feeling helpless in joining together the heart of her son with the productive cycle, she developed joint pain in the exact body organ between the heart and the sexual organ viz. the waist.
Though there are several reasons for waist pain in older women already proven. Yet, the inability of medicine in healing the pain indicates to the fact that the underlying cause of a disease maybe emotional deprivation which manifests as physical deprivation in the body.
In another case, the person was in financial difficulties and could not join a career of writing which he would have liked to pursue if there were no financial problems. He had arthritis of the fingers, again a joints problem. This person said he had no depression and all his scores were reported low, though he looked sad.
There were several people who were constantly defeating the pain by asking themselves to stay positive and saying that everything is okay. This deliberate focus on positive thinking reduced their depression scores substantially. Even so, systematic training in desensitization and self-monitoring methods would help in reducing pain on an actual level by release of positive hormone from the subconscious mind.
According to Dr. Mercola, Emotions are Energy in Motion. He writes in his article that every emotion has vibrational energy. The article says that
“According to Dr. Nelson, when you feel an emotion, what you’re really sensing is the vibration of a particular energy. Similarly, Tolman suggests thinking of emotion as “energy movement.”
Each emotion has its own vibratory signature, and when intense emotions are felt, they can become trapped in your body, much like a ball of energy.
These “balls of energy” can become lodged just about anywhere in your body, where they can then cause disruptions in your body’s energy system, which underlies your physical system much like an invisible matrix.
Your body is both biochemical and biophysical, and disruptions in your field of energy will eventually result in physical dysfunction. It’s interesting to note that certain emotions are known to be associated with pain in certain regions of your body, even though science cannot give an explanation for why.
For example, those suffering from depression will often experience chest pains, even when there’s nothing physically wrong with their heart. Extreme grief can also have a devastating impact—not for nothing is the saying that someone “died from a broken heart.” In the days after losing a loved one, your risk of suffering a heart attack shoots up by 21 times!”
The article goes onto say that the body is made of pure energy. “Thinking of your body as a conglomerate of densely packed energies rather than material cells will also help you understand that an important factor in the root cause of disease is really inharmonious activity at the energetic, subatomic level.
Stress is one major factor that can produce significant amounts of chaos at this underlying energetic level, which is likely why removing stress has such a positive influence on health.
The American Medical Association (AMA) states 80 percent of all health problems are stress related, and even the conservative Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that 85 percent of all diseases appear to have an emotional element.
The classic definition of stress is “any real or imagined threat, and your body’s response to it.” Research has shown that your body’s natural stress response can have a significant impact on everything from immune function and brain chemistry, to blood sugar levels, hormonal balance, and much more.
For example, researchers have found that ruminating on a stressful incident will increase the levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, in your body.
And, as note the emotions associated with living in a “state of emergency” all the time—which is what happens when you’re chronically stressed—are anger, aggression, hatred, fear, prejudice, anxiety, insecurity, hopelessness, and other negative states that feed the energetic chaos that manifests as physical pain and disease.
All of these emotions, which we consider to be part of our conscious reality, are derived or produced by stress chemicals.