of ffffs

[maevele]

Depression’s Upside - NYTimes.com


utter codswallop. yeah, depression is actually an asset, a power? efff that

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I saw that over at Unfunny Business and didn't trust myself to link to it because it made me so fucking pissed off.

Like a number of people in the discussion said, I can tell when I'm getting depressed because LACK of concentration (also total disruption of sleep) and increased anxiety/fear of people. NOTHING upside about it, NOTHING.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

The only upside to my depression was finally truly understanding NIN lyrics ;-D.

[raanve]

I was only able to skim the first page & a half or so -- I'm tired, and so far that article makes me want to smash things -- but it seems that ONCE AGAIN there's a big lengthy article about "depression" that doesn't differentiate between different varieties of depression.

On the second page they cite rumination over specific incidences, and then it becomes clear they're referring to situational depression. Which is, yes, extremely common and even normal. And certainly situational depression can become clinical or chronic depression, etc etc. But for people like me who have MDD that's chronic? Yeah.. not so much an asset. I'm not going to make like nothing at all positive has ever come out of my having this & learning to understand it... but I would be happy to be rid of it, I'd sure as hell be more productive.

And don't even get me started on the whiff of "we're over-medicating" that I catch there.

Lastly -- it's pretty easy to make judgement calls about Darwin's depression when he's not here to tell you to piss off. >:/

[naomikritzer]

There are diseases that have an upside that allowed them to proliferate (for example, the upside to being a tay sachs carrier is that you are resistant to TB. The downside is that if you marry another carrier, each child you conceive has a 1/4 chance of getting tay sachs and DYING but if you are living in 1810 this is a pretty decent trade-off overall from a genetic perspective). And there are diseases where people have at least been able to think up a plausible-sounding upside (for example, I read a book that suggested that Type II diabetes is an adaption to improve survival in very cold climates) (some of the stuff in this book was absolute bullshit, theories that had already been thoroughly debunked well before the book was written, so I don't know how seriously to take it, but at least that one sounded good).

Depression is SO common and SO debilitating that I've occasionally tried to think up some sort of evolutionary upside and I really cannot come up with one. At a con once I think someone suggested that if you were despondent, you probably stayed on your farm instead of going off to join a crusade, and thus you didn't die in battle and your family didn't starve. But this assumes you are not too despondent to get out of bed and do the work of farming, and ... yeah, honestly, I think it's more likely that there's some aspect of modern life that has made severe depression more common. (Not that it wasn't pretty damn common in the past. But I think it may be more common now.)

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

/co-signed, plus the following:

But for people like me who have MDD that's chronic?

Even here, MDD can be *combined* with situational depression ... because, yeah, being depressed doesn't mean you're immune from shitty things happening and making you feel whole tons worse. (for example, ::raises hand::)

It's a pedantic point, sure, but I feel like articles which simultaneously conflate situational and chronic depression *and* treat them as mutually exclusive, depending on which expert they're quoting in which paragraph, are way more common than they logically ought to be.

[emilytheslayer.livejournal.com]

That thing with diabetes, this may or may not be related, but I heard something the other day on Science Friday that apparently dolphins can like, turn diabetes on and off, and they think it's a survival thing to do with times of low food availability, but it's something they're studying more now. It's super-interesting, and if they figure out some more stuff in that line they may have a good line on better treatment for human diabetics.

Anyway, that's obv. not related to the post I just wanted to share.

Cool story, me!

[raanve]

Oh, of course you're right! I'm sorry if it came across that way; that wasn't my intent. (This is what I get for posting to the internets when I should have been in bed 45 minutes prior. -_^)

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

We'll blame the article. ;c)

[leeoakfire.livejournal.com]

Or, in my case, Langston Hughes poetry.

[eriktrips.livejournal.com]

I'd say they are mistaking depressive style for depression itself. sure it can be productive to spend time thinking analytically about life's problems, but in the throes of depression I can't analyze a fucking thing. Ten years ago I wouldn't have made it past the first page of the article, and not just because it answers a complex question with an oversimplified justification for "sadness."

I mean, WTF?? sadness != depression. rumination != depression.

When we are depressed we might ruminate and feel sad, but damn! I can't get any writing or reading done when I'm depressed.

The question of why mental illness is so prevalent in creative people is certainly worth speculation, but all the crazy creative people I've known or read about found that they were unable to work while depressed. Maybe there is a connection between the way mentally ill people think and creativity, but mental illness itself does not "breed" creativity.

People die from this shit. Where's the upside to that?

and furthermore

[eriktrips.livejournal.com]

Oh and also, has anyone considered the possibility that mental illness in general, and depression in particular, are side-effects of the extreme neuroplasticity that makes us able to continue to learn throughout our lives in a way that few other animals do? I think there might be a really complex explanation for how depression is "inherited" that has to do with physiological impressionability, familial culture, societal demands, and a host of other influences on animals with famously fragile nervous systems.

I highly doubt that there is a "depression gene" or that any adaptational advantage gained from any single feature of depression is responsible for its apparent evolutionary success. I suspect that success is only apparent and is the sign of the success of a constellation of neurological structures and functions. I am continually underwhelmed by "scientific" understandings of complexity: shouldn't these people know better?

[maevele.livejournal.com]

I knew my meds were finally right when I stopped listening to bright eyes.

but NIN was actually related to me realizing I was depressed, when I realised other people were not totaaly immersed by nin lyrics

[sophy.livejournal.com]

I kinda wanna beat those guys up now.

I should give up the medication that keeps me from wanting to off myself on a regular basis and, instead, allows me to work towards feeling stable and happy most of the time, because somehow it "might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction". W. T. Fucking. F.

I mean, yea, some people who have depression are very intelligent and creative and successful. That's true. That doesn't mean that depression somehow causes intelligence or makes creative people more creative or is the reason successful people with depression have become successful. I'd say it's more like these people happen to have those traits along with the depression anyway and have succeeded *despite* the depression.

And also, jiminy EFF crickets, not ALL intelligent, creative, successful people have depression. Plenty don't! I hate this mythos that you have to be depressed (and like, actively depressed even, because you know anti-depressants turn you into a zombie with no feelings and you'll lose all creativity!!!!!! ohnoes!!!!one!!!111!) in order to create or be a genius.

And as for rumination = depression. WOT?! At my most depressed I can't think at all. I stare at the wall in front of me and shut the fuck down all thinking processes altogether. This is such BS.

This paragraph says it better, I think:

Although Nesse says he admires the analytic-rumination hypothesis, he adds that it fails to capture the heterogeneity of depressive disorder. Andrews and Thomson compare depression to a fever helping to fight off infection, but Nesse says a more accurate metaphor is chronic pain, which can arise for innumerable reasons. “Sometimes, the pain is going to have an organic source,” he says. “Maybe you’ve slipped a disc or pinched a nerve, in which case you’ve got to solve that underlying problem. But much of the time there is no origin for the pain. The pain itself is the dysfunction.”

That rings true to me. What they're saying about fibro now is that we're getting sent wrong messages from the brain telling us we're in pain when we shouldn't be. I can see how depression could be similar to that.

The following paragraph, however, just pisses me off even more. It reads basically as "well, we acknowledge we're only talking about one small type of depression in which there is a single cause and someone is sad for awhile..." THAT'S NOT EVEN DEPRESSION. At the most, that's situational depression, which can still effectively be treated with anti-depressants, not in the forever-and-ever way like I need mine, but enough to help someone stuck in an emotional rut dig themselves out a bit. I've known people in such situations and the temporary boost from the meds has helped them out. But these guys are basically saying that by trying to de-stigmatize depression, we've stigmatized sadness? What a bunch of horse shit! A big part of treating depression is allowing yourself to feel sadness because guess what? Depression is not sadness. Depression is soul-sucking numbness from all emotions. Feeling genuinely sad and being able to pass through that emotion was a big sign to me that I was getting out of the depression.

This Thompson guy thinks he's a better therapist because his patient realized that her meds were just allowing her to stay in a bad relationship? He's frankly a seriously bad therapist if he didn't realize earlier that she was in a bad relationship that she needed to talk about. Or quite possibly, it was that the meds cleared her head enough to allow her to see the reality of her situation and the solution isn't for her to go off the meds but to Help Her GTFO of that relationship! GRARG.

Wow. Cognitive talk therapy works better than anti-depressants? GEEZE. I wonder if anyone ever thought to combine the two for even greater effect?? Oh, that's right. They have. That's what most therapists and doctors suggest ALREADY.

Phew. This really hit a spot for me. Sorry for raging in your comments section!

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

Just now getting to this...Depression, for me? Manifests in me wanting to do and doing fuck-all. REAL ASSET, THERE.

evopsych wankheads.