Contributing Factors

This season on Contributing Factors, a twenty-four-year-old woman dealing with major depressive disorder (MDD) tells her story about life with a severe mental illness. From first realizing something was wrong, to getting the diagnosis and navigating the healthcare system, to dealing with the social and personal implications of her disease, Lucero Sifuentes takes us deep into her experiences and the sometimes crippling pain of depression. Along the way, we hear from clinicians, social workers, economists, biomedical researchers, family members, entrepreneurs, and more. They give us a broader context about the biology and genetics of depression. They explain how depression and mental illness affect people as individuals and society as a whole. And most importantly, they give us hope for the future of mental health treatment.