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So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yoursel

by mjfl 9y ago

So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yourself less sharp. Perhaps, then, one is depressed because one is rational - because there are real, serious problems with life that need to be dealt with, not escaped. The recent "cures" sound almost Huxley-an.

godzillabrennus 9y ago
I’ve known depression through a relationship with a significant other. Their worries were not solely based on rational issues. They would be depressed at a mall because it wasn’t in a city. Then depressed in a city because they felt removed from their comfort zone. Depression is a mental illness and it sucks. Much of the medicine for depression causes depression to worsen. I hope we unlock a cure in our lifetime.
ehnto 9y ago
You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression. Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorder. They're just emotions. Depression is a mental disorder. An incorrectly operating subroutine in your brain that's flooding you with emotions that make no sense and shutting down others that you would normally feel given the circumstances. You stop smiling at puppies, you stop crying for movies, but then you cry because you dropped your fork, and get annoyed that people you love are talking (okay, sometimes that's normal!). Granted, your line of thinking is why I think some people stay at jobs they hate, stress themselves out with it, and then fall into depression through years of stress and apathy toward their health. But you could also suffer from depression while working a job you love and sleeping on stacks of cash every night.
- psyc 9y ago
  This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.
GrayShade 9y ago
That's a bad way to put it, not that I'm saying sleep deprivation is a good idea. In the case of ketamine, the improvement might be produced by a metabolic derivative with fewer side-effects than ketamine [1]. And it improves the connectivity of the brain [2] [3], so most likely doesn't make the patient "less sharp". For what it's worth, exercise can have the same effect [4]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/understanding-ketamine-to-make-a-fast-acting-safe-antidepressant/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/understanding-ketami... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25613382 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25613382 [3] https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_brachman_could_a_drug_prevent_depression_and_ptsd/ https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_brachman_could_a_drug_prev... [4] https://elifesciences.org/articles/15092 https://elifesciences.org/articles/15092
projektir 9y ago
Depression is weird in that it can be both. You can be depressed due to specific problems... and you can be depressed because your brain sucks. The latter is something that's nice to just get rid of, somehow.
dimal 9y ago
Ketamine doesn’t make you happy and it doesn’t make you less sharp (except for the short period of time when you’re under the influence). I just did it for the third time this week and the effect is not what you describe. It is not an escape. I’m able to think more clearly and be _more_ rational because I don’t have the heavy weight of depression clouding my mind. I feel like ketamine reboots my mind. It pulls me out of the ruminative loop that seems to be the root of my depression and lets me restart life with a clean slate. It allows me to see things more clearly and deal with the real issues causing my depression.
- mjfl 9y ago
  How do you know you're not hallucinating that your mind is clearer?
  - cypherpunks01 9y ago
    Because it's not a hallucinogen.
kortex 9y ago
Depression and anxiety do horrendous damage to cognition, scramble health, cost wages over time, and increase all-cause mortality. And a lot is driven by irrational thoughts. That being said, imho there is absolute something there to the "too rational" bit. One gets really good at coming up with reasons something will not work. Negativity bias becomes overwhelming, and hope and optimism get swamped by a unproductive abundance of cynicism.

by mjfl 9y ago

godzillabrennus 9y ago

I’ve known depression through a relationship with a significant other. Their worries were not solely based on rational issues. They would be depressed at a mall because it wasn’t in a city. Then depressed in a city because they felt removed from their comfort zone. Depression is a mental illness and it sucks. Much of the medicine for depression causes depression to worsen. I hope we unlock a cure in our lifetime.

ehnto 9y ago

You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression. Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorder. They're just emotions. Depression is a mental disorder. An incorrectly operating subroutine in your brain that's flooding you with emotions that make no sense and shutting down others that you would normally feel given the circumstances. You stop smiling at puppies, you stop crying for movies, but then you cry because you dropped your fork, and get annoyed that people you love are talking (okay, sometimes that's normal!). Granted, your line of thinking is why I think some people stay at jobs they hate, stress themselves out with it, and then fall into depression through years of stress and apathy toward their health. But you could also suffer from depression while working a job you love and sleeping on stacks of cash every night.

psyc 9y ago
This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.

GrayShade 9y ago

That's a bad way to put it, not that I'm saying sleep deprivation is a good idea. In the case of ketamine, the improvement might be produced by a metabolic derivative with fewer side-effects than ketamine [1]. And it improves the connectivity of the brain [2] [3], so most likely doesn't make the patient "less sharp". For what it's worth, exercise can have the same effect [4]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/understanding-ketamine-to-make-a-fast-acting-safe-antidepressant/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/understanding-ketami... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25613382 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25613382 [3] https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_brachman_could_a_drug_prevent_depression_and_ptsd/ https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_brachman_could_a_drug_prev... [4] https://elifesciences.org/articles/15092 https://elifesciences.org/articles/15092

projektir 9y ago

Depression is weird in that it can be both. You can be depressed due to specific problems... and you can be depressed because your brain sucks. The latter is something that's nice to just get rid of, somehow.

dimal 9y ago

Ketamine doesn’t make you happy and it doesn’t make you less sharp (except for the short period of time when you’re under the influence). I just did it for the third time this week and the effect is not what you describe. It is not an escape. I’m able to think more clearly and be _more_ rational because I don’t have the heavy weight of depression clouding my mind. I feel like ketamine reboots my mind. It pulls me out of the ruminative loop that seems to be the root of my depression and lets me restart life with a clean slate. It allows me to see things more clearly and deal with the real issues causing my depression.

mjfl 9y ago
How do you know you're not hallucinating that your mind is clearer?
- cypherpunks01 9y ago
  Because it's not a hallucinogen.

kortex 9y ago

Depression and anxiety do horrendous damage to cognition, scramble health, cost wages over time, and increase all-cause mortality. And a lot is driven by irrational thoughts. That being said, imho there is absolute something there to the "too rational" bit. One gets really good at coming up with reasons something will not work. Negativity bias becomes overwhelming, and hope and optimism get swamped by a unproductive abundance of cynicism.