"If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments."
Sure, endless ruminations about what could be non-problems help us solve them...
This article underestimate what being clinically depressed really means, putting it alongside common temporary sadness or a melancholic character/state. AFAIK, people suffering from depressive disease are barely able to function (and need medications) and rarely come out of this state by their own. So, while sadness could be an incentive to focus, eliminate distractions and solve our problems more effectively, i really doubt that cognitive skills and problem solving abilities are improved by a clinically depressive state (not convinced by the experiment in the paper).
Maybe we should all start looking at problems in a more "healthy" way, focusing on finding a solution (maybe following uncommon approaches) instead of "endlessly ruminating".
"people suffering from depressive disease are barely able to function (and need medications) and rarely come out of this state by their own."
Depression tends to resolve spontaneously after a year or two as long as the person doesn't take anti-depressants. (In which case the symptoms will get better immediately, but the problem may last many years or even a lifetime.)
Basically think of it like a drug with a half life of 6 months or so.
I really doubt that clinically diagnosed depression is something that solves itself naturally after x months.
Anti-depressants are likely not the best solution (not a solution at all?) but some introspection practices (orthodox practices but also meditation) could be and they could provide a definitive solution.
See flipside post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2575551 , kudos to him for being able to solve his issue alone (as anyone would expect it wasn't easy).
"I really doubt that clinically diagnosed depression is something that solves itself naturally after x months."
Around 46% of Americans have either depression or an anxiety disorder at some point during their lives, but only around 7% have the problem currently. Seeing as only around 1 / 3 of those affected get treatment, and the treatments most people get aren't super effective, this seems to support my point.
I mean think about it, if we agree that most people aren't getting treatment, and that most of them don't stay depressed forever, then we agree that depression will eventually resolve on its own. From there it's just a matter of nailing down the exact timeline. How long it takes obviously varies a lot from person to person, but a half life of around six months seems like the typical case.
...and the people for whom it doesn't resolve on its own really need to be treated. I live with someone in that situation, and knew her before she was ever medicated, and I can say with near certainty that she would not be alive today were it not for the medications she takes.
You're making the same mistake the article makes: serious depression and the type of depression that 46% of Americans report experiencing are two completely different beasts, and it's devastatingly dangerous to leave the former untreated.
We generally grade deoression as mild, moderate, or severe. Some evidence suggests mild-to-moderate depression doesn't respond to anti-depressants. Anti-depressants were originally tested in those with severe depression, which, like other mental illnesses, is much less common.
"serious depression and the type of depression that 46% of Americans report experiencing are two completely different beasts, and it's devastatingly dangerous to leave the former untreated."
That "on its own" implies that depression will solve itself even if you don't take any action, simply one day it will disappear, you just need to wait. Not likely in my opinion.
These statistics are about the population trend with yearly samples and don't say anything about duration distribution. It would be also interesting to know how many drop treatment, stop seeking medical help or get out of the statistics in different ways, to understand how effectively this problem is being addressed.
Is there actually any research into how 'determined effort' shapes the course of depression? Measuring such a claim seems very difficult, so I'm curious to see if there has been much meaningful work done in this area.
It's hard to believe that whoever wrote that headline actually has experience with severe depression. I have lived together with two people suffering from this, and they can absolutely not think better because of their illness. Maybe people think that "depression" means being sad, but it's much more a feeling of anxiety and desperation. Depressed people usually don't see a way out of it and will not think rationally about their problems.
Also, please don't spread misinformation like "depression resolves spontaneously". It is true that it gets better and worse over time, but not treating a depression is extremely dangerous, as patients tend to see suicide as a good solution to everyone problems. The idea there is that they make live troublesome for everyone, and as they themselves stop caring for their own live at some point, suicide looks like way out.
Speaking from personal experience, depression definitely forced me to face my problems and thoroughly analyze them. The focus depression generates is pretty impressive, even the things I'd distract myself with would often take on the feeling of a search for a missing puzzle piece, like the key to making sense of all my sorrows was just out of reach.
Shifting ones mental perspective is not trivial, and probably essential for overcoming certain types of depressions. In the end I was finally able to notice the blind spot in my mind that I'd been avoiding, and from there take a different path that led me to peace and happiness. It took a lot of effort and insight to get to that point so I for one firmly believe depression has its uses.
I second that experience. However, somewhere in the multidimensional spectrum that constitutes depression, there is a cliff where people can fall (for a variety of reasons, or in case of organic causes, for no apparent reason at all) into a deep cycle of clinical depression. That type of depression is characterized by a horrible crippling effect which prevents sufferers literally from accomplishing anything, including changing their lives for the better.
I'd even go so far as to say that clinical depression is probably over-diagnosed in cases where there are clear external reasons for the person having a crisis. Sometimes, having a crisis can be a perfectly normal and even "healthy" response to events. Though it is a bitter experience, it can even be productive, as you described. But at a certain point, when people fall of the previously mentioned cliff, the brain chemistry can change and make them prone to devastating episodes that are rightfully characterized as a disease.
The Ashkenazi are a fascinating case study for this subject. We still don't know whether a tendency towards being depressive is a biochemical tradeoff for heightened mental capabilities, or whether intelligence makes people miserable because it allows them to see the nature of reality more clearly. Maybe high intelligence and a sarcastic sense of realism about the world correlates with depression because it's the only logical response to the way the world works.
Is there really a higher incidence of depression among the Askenazi? I hadn't heard that before. I can see how German or European Jews would have been affected, possibly for generations after WWII, but that set does not include all Ashkenazis, and definitely includes some Sephardics.
I'd agree - depression does force you to see that something is off-kilter and needs changing - but I've found that it doesn't place you in a mindset that makes it easy to see what is wrong, how to fix it, or how to go about identifying those things. Much of that can be learned so perhaps it's a shift in treatment that's called for (along the lines of cognitive therapy, which I have found beneficial, as well as meditation + yoga, which I have found even more beneficial).
However, I've also learned 'do not make major life decisions while depressed' because often depression lurches to radical and likely long-term damaging solutions which may have a short-term benefit of short-circuiting the depression (e.g. thinking 'quit job immediately without having another one lined up and having family depending on the income').
I believe depression is like a cancer. There's various causes for it. Trying to narrow solutions to depression is like saying a cure for cancer has been found. Depression, like any mental illness is pretty damn hard to understand. This is the only source I can provide for an easy explanation why people may hide mental illnesses: http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/133179.html
I've read about this phenomenon before. Ignoring the difference between severe clinical depression and "melancholy", it's not hard to see why dissatisfaction and intelligence-manifested might be correlated:
Happy people don't need to rock the boat. Happy people don't turn their lives upside down striving to build great companies and unearth essential truths. Happy people are... happy already.
Those people tend to look towards the worst than the good in situations. Even an emperor may lament how hard it is to find a new heir when worried that the potential partners may misrepresent themselves.
In my own personal experience, the answer is a very resounding NO, and unless others experience depression differently from me, I can't imagine anybody saying "yes".
When not depressed, I am able to dive deep into an intellectual problem and probe it from different angles, leading to creative solutions. When depressed, I have difficulty even concentrating on a topic and creativity is lost. Furthermore, when not depressed, my mind constantly works on problems (the proverbial shower ideas); when depressed, that stops dead.
Maybe there is some other definition of "thinks better" that I don't understand, but for me with my definition, absolutely not.
Maybe there is some other definition of "thinks better" that I don't understand...
Well, there is a passage from the article, which frames it specifically in terms of thinking about social relationships:
“I started thinking about how, even if you are depressed for a few months, the depression might be worth it if it helps you better understand social relationships,” Andrews says
Except (and I'm speaking extremely anecdotally here!) my relationships suffer because I start projecting my feelings onto other people's actions. Have to cancel a get together? It must be because the thought of spending time with me is too burdensome.
Given the black-tinted glasses, relationship understanding is one of the first things out the door.
What gets missed is that questions need answers. You might be more willing to ask questions, but you need to answer them differently, too. What you're talking about is a negative loop in which you answer the same question in the same way every time, which keeps you stuck in the same place. This is, essentially, what non-depressed friends are for when you're depressed: they can offer different answers and help you break out of the loop.
I think this article mixes melancholy, "Weltschmerz" and actual depression in a very nonchalant way.
I can see how people who tend to ruminate would also do that on daily problems and might therefore yield better results but to point in the direction of this actually benefiting a truly depressed person is beyond me.
When you are actually depressed, your whole thought process is quite literally de-railed and poisoned and you are ruminating in a very unhealthy way and typically you are unable to "dig yourself out", no matter how good at deep thinking and ruminating you might be. Even worse, you will ruminate yourself even deeper into depressions. And then there is also "clinical depression".
No doubt it's a spectrum. Like autism, near-sightedness, and skin color. I'm a doc in the military, where there has been a striking uptick in depression and related issues. At some point, in the clinic, you've got to make decisions, and the analytic rheumination hypothesis is useful. Are there other kinds of depression? Probably. Is it possible to get caught in a downward spiral from which one can not escape on their own? Sure. Could the AR hypothesis still be relevant in some of those cases? Absolutely.
This article underestimate what being clinically depressed really means, putting it alongside common temporary sadness or a melancholic character/state. AFAIK, people suffering from depressive disease are barely able to function (and need medications) and rarely come out of this state by their own. So, while sadness could be an incentive to focus, eliminate distractions and solve our problems more effectively, i really doubt that cognitive skills and problem solving abilities are improved by a clinically depressive state (not convinced by the experiment in the paper).
Maybe we should all start looking at problems in a more "healthy" way, focusing on finding a solution (maybe following uncommon approaches) instead of "endlessly ruminating".