Depression is not a malfunction

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary

by nreece • 17 years ago

73 32 17 years ago

Virax• 17 years ago

Depression is very much a malfunction. When I was depressed, I wasn't functioning, and now that I take drugs every day to control it (over-the-counter drugs, btw), I function quite well.

What is true is that being just shy of depression is probably adaptive and beneficial, which is why there are many examples of brilliant people who spent part of their lives depressed. It also explains why genes "for depression" haven't been selected out of the gene pool - it is likely that they are beneficial for the majority of carriers (makes you work harder, you're less satisfied with what you have, etc...) but if you have too many of these genes, then you just hate life and want to kill yourself, at least sometimes.

BTW the Wikipedia article on depression is very good and has links to some relatively accessible journal articles on current thinking about depression.

spydez• 17 years ago

What OTC drugs are there for depression?

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

Beer.

mj001• 17 years ago

St John's wort is one

njharman2• 17 years ago

Having good diet is very important and if you don't have that, take vitamin supplements esp selenium and iodine. Don't over take anything. Depression is an imbalance (of mostly brain chemicals).

sam-E, Valarian, GABA, Gotu Kola, Skull Cap.

I'm a firm believer in people are different and need to find their own solution (which may involve going to professional and subscription drugs). It took me several years to find what works for me. St John's Wort did not at all. YMMV

I guess most those are anti-anxiety / mood levelers which works for me but I'm probably MD.

The thing that has broken me out of depression the most is sunshine! Just going out and standing in the sun, eyes closed face towards sun. I also take off my glasses and let reflected sunlight directly into eyes. 2-5min. Preferably around middle of day. Which I'm guessing is some combination of vitamin D and getting my circadian rhythm straitened out.

netsp• 17 years ago

From: http://altmedicine.about.com/od/healthconditionsatod/a/Depre...

  St. John's Wort
  Omega-3 fatty acids
  Sam e
  Folic Acid
  5-HTP
  Diet (sugar, caffeine, alcohol, vitamin b6, magnesium)
  exercise
  sunlight
  etc.

I suppose you might include psychotherapy, various other non drug therapies, a whole range of activities, socialisation, sex, pets...

Most of those probably wouldn't be considered drugs at all. I think the jist is that you can get good results managing depression with a mix of treatments (that may include drugs), which will vary from person to person. I think it is similar to how HIV or high blood pressure gets treated. You need to find what works by trial and error.

I like the fact that in the above list it is not obvious where the lines are: drug or non drug, medicine, paramedicine, pseudo medicine, alternative medicine or old wives tale. That kind of blurriness also applies to the diagnosis of the condition itself.

karzeem• 17 years ago

Yeah, it was a little surprising not to see the piece emphasize more the fact that for seriously and/or chronically depressed people, the condition is very much a net loss. Going through a down period of two weeks can ultimately be helpful. But accomplishing nothing and taking pleasure in nothing for months or years is clearly destructive. I don't think the piece meant to suggest otherwise, but it came off seeming as if it did.

delackner• 17 years ago

You may be right, but there's an alternative explanation that would make both your perspective and the article's theory hold. You chose the word "function" to describe how you feel. Functioning means I suppose meeting the expectations (both internally and externally imposed) in the society you are in, in the activities that you engage in, in the roles and relationships (personal and professional) that you are connected to.

If any those connections seemed to be wrong for you, but you were unable to see an alternative, wouldn't depression in the sense of the article be a good way for your body to try to devote lots of energy to finding an alternative?

Maybe a world with such tangled and deep functional requirements implies that in some cases the "solution" that depression tries to help you find, might not always exist. Or might require such a huge allocation of effort that one alternative - ignoring the dissatisfaction - becomes attractive.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

As noted in the previous HN thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=788259

that submitted this article, Kay Redfield Jamison, author of Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,

http://www.amazon.com/Touched-Fire-Manic-Depressive-Artistic...

and co-author of the definitive text on manic-depressive illness

http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Rec...

has thought out loud in her writings over the years about whether treatments for depression that help suffering people may also deprive society of creative output. Her current thinking on the issue--and she takes lithium herself every day--is that the best-evidenced mood-stabilizing treatments for mood disorders are helpful to patients and increase rather than decrease their ability to contribute useful work product to society. Her co-author, Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D., is still deeply skeptical of some antidepressant medications (e.g., the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) because of their capacity for inducing mania in many bipolar patients.

dkarl4• 17 years ago

But accomplishing nothing and taking pleasure in nothing for months or years is clearly destructive. I don't think the piece meant to suggest otherwise, but it came off seeming as if it did.

That's because years of raising public awareness of depression as a serious problem has led to people no longer labeling minor episodes "depression." It used to be common for someone to say, "I'm depressed," or "I'm feeling depressed," when they were, umm, down in the dumps. People have stopped saying that now that clinical depression has become the primary meaning of the word. A lot of public awareness work went into making people realize that major clinical depression is very, very different from just feeling sad. It was important for people to realize that. However, it doesn't mean there aren't illuminating connections between major clinical depression and just feeling down in the dumps for a while. Consider the difference between a burning house and a burning candle -- it's important for people to understand the difference, but they're both "fire." If we redefined the word "fire" to only mean life-threatening, out-of-control forms of fire, wouldn't that actually weaken our understanding of fire?

To support my point that the meaning of the word is changing, consider the difference between the dictionary definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/depression

and the way the word is defined at NIMH: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/compl...

There are a whole bunch of people jumping into this thread to make the point that using "depression" to refer to anything other than a mental illness is wrong. But that is a recent redefinition of the word justified by the laudable goal of helping people realize how serious depression can be. (Basically, it's PR elevated to PC by its good intentions.) That meaning has obviously served a valuable purpose. The question is, does the traditional definition of depression actually encode a better understanding than this new PR/PC definition? Maybe, as with "fire," it's best to distinguish different forms of depression by qualifiers and special terms rather than pretend they're entirely different and unrelated things.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

submitted four days ago with the original article title:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=788259

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

angstrom• 17 years ago

Ignoring chemical imbalances, most depression stems from a loss of control in ones life. If depression is really just a side effect of having a self image and a sense of control over that future self image then the benefit is the ability to adapt. The problem may not even have a solution, it may just be a need to reconfigure the self image in accordance with reality.

njharman2• 17 years ago

It's bad that the word depression is used for two dramatically different conditions.

Clinical/chemical depression. (which btw causes loss of control of ones life)

Emotional depression.

necro• 17 years ago

After reading the article it is clear to me that perhaps the best treatment for depression would be a start up. The symptoms fall right in line with a startup lifestyle: ability and need to continuously work on problems dividing them smaller and smaller, eating disorders and weight loss or gain, isolation and not spending time with friends and loved ones, etc. I'm not depressed but my startup lifestyle sure has me living with the symptoms.

blhack• 17 years ago

Anecdotal, but this seems to back up what I've experienced in life...

I've dealt with bad depression for most of my life..and it really, really sucks. When I "come out" of it, I'll look back at some of the things I did and said while I was depressed and just be like "WTF!?". It will usually result in my apologizing to people around me for acting bizarre, and alienating myself from whatever friends I had previously made.

Suck-zore.

The GOOD thing about it is that depression has almost always been a major brain-catalyst for me. When I was young, the first thing that got catalyzed was dirt-bikes. For a summer I did almost literally nothing other than read about, and ride dirtbikes. I emerged from that knowing more than anybody I know of about all the racers and bikes and parts and tracks etc. etc.

Then I discovered computers...

I know it's stupid and childish to reference the Hacker's Manifesto...but that pretty much nailed it for me. Here is something that doesn't get mad at me for being depressed, or scream at me to stop talking back, or think I'm weird, or anything like that....

Hands down, my best code has been written while I'm depressed.

For somebody that can't imagine what being depressed is like...imagine taking a photo that is out of focus, nothing really makes any sense at all. You can make out shapes, but they're blurry and not that meaningful. That is depression (well, that is actually a better descriptor for mania, not depression...depression would be more like really low light)...

Sitting down at a computer and getting buried under a bunch of code is...in focus, if that makes sense. When you're manic, or depressed, code is something solid that you can grab on to.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense.

snowflakes• 17 years ago

In my case, being depressed means much deeper understanding and much more sharper mind. I even have an impression that the hard period I had few years ago, when I was only working and reading books, formed me intellectually.

On the other hand, I quickly realize that consequences of my thoughts are rather pointless. Not that my thoughts are pointless; far from it. The catch is that, actually, I couldn't care less about consequences of my thoughts, as they have little impact on the world.

Most of the time, I even don't care about sharing my thoughts with the world. I speak a lot with my girlfriend and a couple of friends but, for example, writing articles is pointless because I will have to deal with not understanding people.

The paradoxical consequence of thinking too much is mistrusting yourself. If you have an opinion which is very solid logically but is against 99% of the population, it is easy to wonder whom is wrong: the whole society or you.

That's why coding helps me a lot. The logical framework of code points me out that my thoughts are not pointless and my mind is not disorted anyhow. Coding helps me to get peace of mind. I'm much more relaxed when I write code.

I believe this is one of the reasons why a lot of people went to mathematics as well. If you mistrust yourself, you have to have a framework that keeps you in touch with the real world. Logic ensures that you are not crazy, yet.

Also, that's why coding is so addictive. It takes a week without coding to get me anxious. Without coding, I feel that my brain lacks some chemistry.

Personally I believe that depression, or any other unusual state of mind, is just a filter that disorts the output of your mind. It gives you a very different perspective, but if you're blind, it won't help you anyhow.

This is partially the reason why it is hard to decide whether depression is a problem, or not. Smart people might gain a lot from different states of mind; regular folks, well, not much.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether depression is actually a cause or a result, in case of some people. If you start thinking too much and realize how the world actually looks, it is easy to get depressed a bit.

PS. I've created a separate account for purpose of this comment; I feel this is too personal. Sorry that this is a bit chaotic but I don't have enough time to write the shorter comment so I wrote the longer one.

jackchristopher• 17 years ago

This concept sounds similar to the point you make: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

If what you're calling "depression" is caused by thinking, then it's not depression, at least in the clinical sense used in the article.

neilk• 17 years ago

This article seems to be mostly speculation and is frankly weird in its assertions.

The very definition of depression is unproductive behaviors, and patterns of thought that go in circles.

There is a productive emotion that causes both reflectiveness and social isolation; it's called "sadness". People often describe a period of mourning as a necessary downtime, a reconfiguration, to get ready for the rest of one's life. I have never heard anyone describe depression as anything other than a waste of time.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

"I have never heard anyone describe depression as anything other than a waste of time."

What does that mean exactly? I think the reason why teenagers and young adults are depressed is because they are trying to figure out what the world is and what is their place in it. Sorting out their fundational believes and what not, like what career to choose, or whether it matters if there is a god, or whatever and I wouldn't call that a waste of time.

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

That's not depression.

http://www.mhsanctuary.com/depression/dsm.htm

bkovitz3• 17 years ago

Yup. It's amateurish speculation.

Some problems with the speculation, known to anyone who has read about or dealt with depression:

* Difficulty concentrating is one of the symptoms of depression. You can't think.

* Depression typically begins for no apparent reason in the person's life circumstances. It's often seasonal, triggered by things like changes in the length of the day.

* Depression doesn't lift when you've solved a problem. It lifts for no apparent reason, too.

* Depression is often fatal.

A better speculation: depression is a disorder of the circadian rhythms.

timr2• 17 years ago

Your speculation has been extensively explored, and isn't actually better than the theory advanced in the article:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=D...

Reading over a few of the abstracts, the consensus appears to be that depression can be caused by defects in circadian rhythm, but that the relationship isn't necessary, and may not be sufficient. If I were you, I'd ease off on using "amateurish speculation" as an epithet in this situation.

dkarl4• 17 years ago

Difficulty concentrating is a tricky symptom. Depressed people may have difficulty concentrating on what they want to think about, but they may ruminate obsessively on unpleasant topics. That fits nicely with the article's speculation that depression is "nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving."

dkarl4• 17 years ago

Yes, it's amateurish speculation, but it does contain a useful point which you have missed. Perhaps pathological, clinical depression should be seen as the pathological manifestation of a valuable adaptation. Depression might be kind of like the immune system: a valuable mechanism that sometimes goes crazy and causes harm. By defining depression as "unproductive behaviors, and patterns of thought that go in circles," you reserve the term depression for pathological forms of depression, which might not be the best way of looking at it.

timr2• 17 years ago

"There is a productive emotion that causes both reflectiveness and social isolation; it's called "sadness". People often describe a period of mourning as a necessary downtime, a reconfiguration, to get ready for the rest of one's life. I have never heard anyone describe depression as anything other than a waste of time."

What the article is trying to describe is the theory that the neural mechanisms that enable reflectiveness are also responsible for depression; the theory argues that the former trait presents a selective advantage, but that defects in the process result in depression.

Neither the theory nor the article (in my reading) are arguing that depression is a beneficial outcome -- only that depression may be an inevitable, occasional result of having the capacity for reflectivity and sadness. It's a hypothesis for why depression isn't more rare than it is.

polos• 17 years ago

Depression is the symptom you get when your soul is left without sufficient daily nutrition, happening for a longer period.

Now, what does the soul "eat"? Love! In any form, and there are so many.

Depression is actually exploding in our current times, all over the world. How will future generations judge the health state of our current situation? Hmm..

yan• 17 years ago

That's cute and all, but your mood is influenced by chemicals (influenced by, or is is beyond the scope of this conversation) and an imbalance in those chemicals will lead to a disorder that you can fix by improving that balance. I'm also not saying loving someone won't do that.

No one says you can solve a malfunctioning liver with love.

edit: Also, depression doesn't just mean being down and the cure for it is 'cheering' up. Depression is an overloaded word.

greg• 17 years ago

Very interesting topic. A few checks on current comments:

The metaphor of the brain as a carefully portioned soup of chemicals should be retired. The brain is a modularized information processor. While you can pour in more "happy" molecules (try morphine), this still causes a cascade of other effects. Prozac doesn't start working for two weeks -- figure that one out!

Drawing a line between clinical depression and healthy sadness is easier said than done. Almost no one gets depressed without triggering life events. The difference is in depth and recovery. In any case, we still don't have a good idea what is "healthy" about sadness.

It is really hard to judge the long-term benefits of depression. Evolution plays out over generations. Modern society is not what we are adapted for anyway. Maybe we should study siblings of suicides to see if they are somehow more biologically successful on average.

teeja• 17 years ago

I don't trust the human body when it comes to pain. It tends to go on way longer than I need it to get the point.

I also find it hard to think of something that strips away your motivation, even your desire to experience things that have always delighted you, as a positive. It's a very vulnerable state, not something to be sought.

That said, it's part of life for many people, moreso in creative people, and learning to recognize it and take steps to unravel it is essential to one's future health.

Depression is not a malfunction

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