What are the environmental factors that will predispose someone towards depression?

The risk factors can vary. The most serious and strong risk factor is continued or chronic stress, which is a really bad factor for many mental physical cognitive health problems. Our body is designed to deal with stress if it’s within a very short period of time, so we all experience stress in our everyday lives like public speaking, especially because our bodies are initially designed to send a signal to the brain for a fight or flight situation, but once we overcome this, our body relaxes. Stress is actually good for us for a small amount of time. However, over long periods of time, if we’re stressed, our body becomes unbalanced. There’s a specific stress hormone that regulates how we react to stress and with chronic stress, this hormone cannot effectively signal to our brain and to our body, causing imbalancing in the body which is not health. Some solutions like meditation and mindfulness techniques are able to help with stress, and things like moderate physical activity. Exercise is good for our brains, our mood, and our cognitive functions. These all vary by person, but generally find ways to relax your brain, find times to have fun and give yourself some breaks, and surround yourself by family and friends when you can, as loneliness is very bad for our mental and cognitive health.