Depression is a label for a wide range of complex illnesses. I am sure that what you say is true for some people, but in some cases it simply isn't. I've got friends who have been helped by medications, and I've got friends who have tried medication and it didn't help. One thing that is counter productive is to assert that these medications don't work ever, because they do appear to be extremely effective in some cases. Which figuratively and factually is a life saver.
It works around half the time. So, yea it can cure depression though it does not cure everyone of depression.
It's kind of like rebooting a computer, it does not always work and sometimes it makes things worse. But, comparing the cost vs benefit it's generally worth trying.
Your insistence on evidence for a "cure" is nonsensical.
Doctors don't have a cure for depression at the moment, it's true. They also don't have cures for HIV/AIDS, or diabetes, or asthma, or lots of other chronic medical conditions (see https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta... for a list of the most common ones).
But they do have medications that can make it possible for people with those conditions to lead long, productive, more or less normal lives. Are you suggesting the people with these conditions should be turning those medications down? That they should refuse any treatment short of 100% removal of the underlying condition, even if by doing so they reduce the length and quality of their own life?
Why, exactly? Why on earth make the perfect the enemy of the good like that?
I did not suggest that people should turn down medication, or refuse treatment.
I didn't say anything other than that medication doesn't cure depression - which I stand behind.
Let me turn the tables on your indignance for a moment - why don't you care about the causes of depression? If the incidence is on the rise, the causes must be getting stronger. How can you condone simply restoring people to productivity with drugs when there is an increasingly serious problem harming them in the first place?
You are trying to redefine terms here. Depression is not the same as the underlying cause of Depression. You can go from Depressed to not Depressed without becoming normal or happy.
Further, it's not clear that the actual incidence is on the rise or if this is reversion to the mean etc. We have shifted what people call Depression and how willing people are to seek treatment. The age adjusted suicide rate was actually higher from 1950 - 1980 than it is today.
In 1950 the rates of suicide for 75–84 years old people was 31.1 in 2010 it was 15.7. If you look at the actual rate by age it's all over the map. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html
It's actually unclear what your argument is here. Remember that these comments are in response to an article about rising incidence of depression treated with multiple medications.
It sounds like for some reason you are now just trying to say that depression isn't really on the increase in certain places.
