shocked and substance

Adreneline and cortisol seem to be the primary agents in creating memory.

Seretonin is the primary agent in depression.

So no, I don't think it is the same chemical neurotransmitter.

But this is really my elaborate way of bookmarking your interesting question.

I don't know which chemical you are speaking about. I'm curious to hear more feedback. I know I have heard it before, but didn't listen close enough to remember the name of which chemicals.

I have heard that trauma does indeed 'burn' stronger impressions in the brain than 'regular' events. A burn seems like an accurate way to express it, to me. Like a psychic burning.

With any burn, there is sensitivity. Pain. Some scarring, healing going on.

When the trauma or burn happens, it is an intense experience that of course is going to flood the body and mind with craploads of chemicals to defend itself, and to make sense of the situation. Trauma is a big change, and it is perceived as a danger (even if it were a good trauma).

If a person's body were burnt in a fire, the body would remember and feel that after the event. It's natural.

Same with the mind. It wants to remember to make sense, because it is experiencing pain, and because it was it did before.
A body in motion, and all that. Without any effort or outside help or info, it will go on in that rut on and on. It's the "first response" or default setting.
A strange defense.

It's not without it's own sense. It's healthy, in a way, as a messenger, until 'X' (your life is losing quality for no reason, the message isn't serving any healthy purpose anymore, you aren't taking action or are ruled by it... etc).

And just like medicine can't heal an outside burn without the person's help, and if it isn't the correct medicine for the situation and in the correct amounts, drugs can't help cure trauma.

There is no doubt in my own mind, whatsoever, that trauma and depression can indeed be linked. Linked like bedfellows.

Though I do tend to think that depression is natural, and normal and healthy; a shared universal human experience that can't be 'cured' for one and all.
I've given up on trying to do that - CURE depression.

I now tend to think it is about management. For it to be one of many of the huge array of experiences we will have as breathing human beings, not some 'disease' or plague that defines a person or dominates their existence.
Even though some of us will experience more depression than others, it doesn't change that it will always require management.

This is all very unprofessional and a laywoman's understanding of it. But it makes sense to me, without knowing which chemical is what and connected exactly how, that if a mind is repeating the same thoughts feelings and behaviors (it's not just your brain living depression - it's your body and heart and it is all connected so finely! ) then, all that bloody stress is going to deplete the feel-good chems in your brain too.

An initial depletion of feel-goods, combined with an excess of stress chems (the trauma itself), followed by a habitual pattern of living thinking breathing in a way that pours stress chems through your body 24-7;
yeah, that can lead to depression...
that is depression, more or less, and probably a more chronic form of it.

Best wishes in finding the answers you need.

The "chemical" is adreneline.




http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/memory_pill.html