5 ms·

Why do people keep treating depression as a medical condition? You are depressed because your life sucks. Fix it or accept it. <eom>

zackattack 16y ago
This guy is being unfairly downvoted. A not insignificant number of cases of depression are rooted in not cultivating proper emotional awareness, and then ignoring the body's emotional signals. But people are unwilling and, frankly, unable to take responsibility for their emotional life so this attitude is an unpopular one. Also worth pointing out is that it's unrealistic to expect that everyone can be happy, some unhappiness is essential to social stability.
- nollidge 16y ago
  They're not being downvoted unfairly. Yours was a nuanced and considered opinion (and I upvoted); theirs was absolute and unreasonable.
- paganel 16y ago
  > Also worth pointing out is that it's unrealistic to expect that everyone can be happy, some unhappiness is essential to social stability. Thank you for this. This was one of the most important things I learned out of my (pretty) mild depression. Since then whenever I see people pretending to always be happy or at least striving to always be happy I sense that there's something wrong. That, and the thing that I began to understand what the Stoics were saying a little bit more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism)
  - eavc 16y ago
    Be careful not to be cynical - happiness works on a bell curve much like intelligence or height. Some people are naturally much happier than average.
- klondikered 16y ago
  No, he's not being unfairly downvoted, and I cannot upvote you either. You are basically talking out of your ass...please cite figures to back up what you mean by "a not insignificant number". And how, pray tell, is some unhappiness essential to "social stability", whatever that may be...
  - noname123 16y ago
    Simple. Human nature is about survival and reproduction. Resources are limited so that only some of us will survive and reproduce. Scarcity produces unhappiness which in term induces human productivity/creativity. Case in point, Love in the Time of Cholera. You want to get the girl but you are a victim of socioeconomic scarcity. You become a life-long melancholic but are motivated to climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.
    - zackattack 16y ago
      Or check this study out. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167510 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167510
    - eavc 16y ago
      >Scarcity produces unhappiness Beyond a basic level, this fails to be true. >which in term induces human productivity/creativity. Show me that depression leads to greater productivity. I expect that you cannot. >climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. This has nothing to do with depression and little to do with happiness. >All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex. This is trite, wildly hyperbolic, and almost certainly baseless.
    - mannicken 16y ago
      Not necessarily. Depression paralyzes you, leaves you too scared to leave the house or do anything. "Stars" are more likely to be hypomanic. Or just people who like writing or composing music too much :) People like to blame success on mental disease or drugs because it helps them justify their laziness. Also, attempt to claim that Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Kobain wrote their music because they had a self-inferiority complex might be caused by the self-inferiority complex and envy :P
- dtf 16y ago
  Being depressed is not like being unhappy, it's like being dead. It's not sadness, or fear, or grief or any other normal human emotion. Grief and sadness are mental manifestations, and they have character and facets which may be approached and reasoned with. But depression is physical. It is the void, infinite and eternal, pounding incessantly from every single cell of your body. Terror and hopelessness, real emotions for sure, are just a side-effects of this physical sensation. There is no reasoning with depression, because it is entirely physical, and it often robs you of any faculties which you might otherwise muster to defeat it. The author is quite correct - it is deadly.
- noname123 16y ago
  No worries, bro. One doesn't live by karma points (that would be pretty sad). I'd say that it's pretty funny that so many people took it upon themselves to explain how their life is so perfect and that any possible explaination for their depression could not lie in that their life sucks. The reality is that most people's lives suck (including mine and yours) and that most people spend their lives covering up how their lives suck by buying more crap, settling & self-medication. As you said, if it didn't suck, human civilization would not progress. People make a simple problem into a much more complicated one. If your life sucks, then fix it or accept it. The caveat is that you have to either man up to fix it or swallow your pride to accept it.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    Send me an email if you feel like it Edit: on second thought, don't. It probably won't help me overcome any of my personal rationalizations or bring me any closer to my goals. But I have a recommendation. Read Nassim Taleb's Bed of Procrustes.
    - noname123 16y ago
      Funny because the next book I'm going to read is Nassim Taleb's "Dynamic Hedging" which I'll try to apply to my volatility trading. IMHO, Taleb is an expert in finance not in life in general.
      - zackattack 16y ago
        ok, so who is an expert on life? and have they published a book?
- eavc 16y ago
  I downvoted you for the same reason I downvoted the other guy. You are speaking in vague generalities, with authority, on matters about which you are apparently ignorant. Moreover, your propagating this misinformation is detrimental to attitudes about depression, both for those who might be afflicted and the public as a whole. Depression is a serious problem which should be addressed through science, credible education, and consultation with professionals. The comment you are defending is utterly asinine. Persistent depression is far more likely to be the result of cognitive-behavioral factors and/or physiological factors rooted in genetics than it is to be the result of bad life circumstances aside from some negative extremes. Furthermore, you grant that people are "unable to take responsibility for their emotional life" and yet somehow also support the patent contradiction to that idea in suggesting that "fix it or accept it" is acceptable advice. Your final line (in addition to conflating freedom from depression with "being happy") belies a kind of moralistic thinking about mental health. Would you say that broken legs are essential to social stability? Or ulcers?
  - zackattack 16y ago
    You make an excellent point. I should have distinguished between severe depression and dysthymia. I do not know much about severe depression but I have plenty of knowledge about dysthymia. Many people casually conflate the two and I made that fundamental error in my post. My apologies.
    - eavc 16y ago
      I appreciate that. I honestly don't care about winning arguments or looking smart on this point. I just wanted to get out my critique of your post for people to read after yours so they can see another angle. Warm regards.
daeken 16y ago
Really? I have an amazing job, great friends, and every toy a man could want. I'm insanely happy with my life, yet I can see myself falling into depression right now. Depression != sadness or stress.
- axod 16y ago
  Surely that's extremely common. If you have every toy you could want, what's left to do? Surely that's why several millionaires go up, go to excess, lose it all etc.
  - daeken 16y ago
    Make more money, start a family, buy a house. Plenty left to be done. Manic/depressive cycles have been a part of my life through good times, bad times, and those in between.
    - axod 16y ago
      Just saying, when everything seems 'easy' and you're making money without really trying, I've felt low at the points when I've experienced that. I think it's completely natural to feel depressed when life doesn't feel like a challenge. It seems to be common amongst autobiographies I've read also.
Mz 16y ago
It gets treated like a medical condition because it has, at least in part, physiological roots. Yes, people can get depressed because their life sucks and they feel powerless to fix it. But people can also get depressed because they are ill, because there is something wrong with their brain chemistry, etc. Some studies have shown a connection between diet and depression. Others indicate that exercising more is more effective than drugs for treating depression. So there is definitely a medical aspect to it, even though, yes, sometimes fixing your life (rather than your body) is what is needed.
throwaway294815 16y ago
No, it's definitely chemical. One of the symptoms of depression is ahedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. It is a very strange experience. One day I went outside and it was a beautiful sunny day, and I couldn't enjoy it. Not that I was so sad the sunny day didn't matter. It did nothing. It was like I was looking at it through a store window, but my world was overcast and gray. One day I went to play at a pool with my newborn son. It was a beautiful day, he was laughing, kids were frolicking and playing. I felt nothing. Not the slightest reaction. As if they weren't there. I have a beautiful life. No financial stress. My family is awesome. My job is awesome. I don't do anything reckless or self-destructive. I have lots of hopes for the near future. But many days, I didn't care if I lived or died, didn't care if I missed so much work I got fired, didn't care if I alienated my family, didn't care that I was cold even though there was a blanket within arm's reach. Medication resulted in a nearly immediate improvement, and a slow return to normalcy. And it is definitely the medication. One day I missed my meds, and I went into a three day long tailspin during which I couldn't care enough about anything to make even small decisions like whether to have lunch or how to put my socks on.
- gnosis 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, which medication were you taking?
- reinhardt 16y ago
  I'm also struggling with anhedonia and amotivation for years. I don't have the much of the sadness, hopelessness and other common symptoms so I've discounted the depression hypothesis. Maybe I should reconsider and see a psych.
NZ_Matt 16y ago
Watch this short film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBikj3kRco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBikj3kRco It tells the story of John Kirwin, a legendary Rugby player here in New Zealand. He was supposed to be living the dream as one of the best and toughest Rugby players in the world, yet depression still got the better of him. From the outside it's easy to tell someone to "harden up" but that does no good when the person is going through a personal hell.

zackattack 16y ago

This guy is being unfairly downvoted. A not insignificant number of cases of depression are rooted in not cultivating proper emotional awareness, and then ignoring the body's emotional signals. But people are unwilling and, frankly, unable to take responsibility for their emotional life so this attitude is an unpopular one. Also worth pointing out is that it's unrealistic to expect that everyone can be happy, some unhappiness is essential to social stability.

nollidge 16y ago
They're not being downvoted unfairly. Yours was a nuanced and considered opinion (and I upvoted); theirs was absolute and unreasonable.
paganel 16y ago
> Also worth pointing out is that it's unrealistic to expect that everyone can be happy, some unhappiness is essential to social stability. Thank you for this. This was one of the most important things I learned out of my (pretty) mild depression. Since then whenever I see people pretending to always be happy or at least striving to always be happy I sense that there's something wrong. That, and the thing that I began to understand what the Stoics were saying a little bit more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism)
- eavc 16y ago
  Be careful not to be cynical - happiness works on a bell curve much like intelligence or height. Some people are naturally much happier than average.
klondikered 16y ago
No, he's not being unfairly downvoted, and I cannot upvote you either. You are basically talking out of your ass...please cite figures to back up what you mean by "a not insignificant number". And how, pray tell, is some unhappiness essential to "social stability", whatever that may be...
- noname123 16y ago
  Simple. Human nature is about survival and reproduction. Resources are limited so that only some of us will survive and reproduce. Scarcity produces unhappiness which in term induces human productivity/creativity. Case in point, Love in the Time of Cholera. You want to get the girl but you are a victim of socioeconomic scarcity. You become a life-long melancholic but are motivated to climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    Or check this study out. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167510 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167510
  - eavc 16y ago
    >Scarcity produces unhappiness Beyond a basic level, this fails to be true. >which in term induces human productivity/creativity. Show me that depression leads to greater productivity. I expect that you cannot. >climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. This has nothing to do with depression and little to do with happiness. >All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex. This is trite, wildly hyperbolic, and almost certainly baseless.
  - mannicken 16y ago
    Not necessarily. Depression paralyzes you, leaves you too scared to leave the house or do anything. "Stars" are more likely to be hypomanic. Or just people who like writing or composing music too much :) People like to blame success on mental disease or drugs because it helps them justify their laziness. Also, attempt to claim that Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Kobain wrote their music because they had a self-inferiority complex might be caused by the self-inferiority complex and envy :P
dtf 16y ago
Being depressed is not like being unhappy, it's like being dead. It's not sadness, or fear, or grief or any other normal human emotion. Grief and sadness are mental manifestations, and they have character and facets which may be approached and reasoned with. But depression is physical. It is the void, infinite and eternal, pounding incessantly from every single cell of your body. Terror and hopelessness, real emotions for sure, are just a side-effects of this physical sensation. There is no reasoning with depression, because it is entirely physical, and it often robs you of any faculties which you might otherwise muster to defeat it. The author is quite correct - it is deadly.
noname123 16y ago
No worries, bro. One doesn't live by karma points (that would be pretty sad). I'd say that it's pretty funny that so many people took it upon themselves to explain how their life is so perfect and that any possible explaination for their depression could not lie in that their life sucks. The reality is that most people's lives suck (including mine and yours) and that most people spend their lives covering up how their lives suck by buying more crap, settling & self-medication. As you said, if it didn't suck, human civilization would not progress. People make a simple problem into a much more complicated one. If your life sucks, then fix it or accept it. The caveat is that you have to either man up to fix it or swallow your pride to accept it.
- zackattack 16y ago
  Send me an email if you feel like it Edit: on second thought, don't. It probably won't help me overcome any of my personal rationalizations or bring me any closer to my goals. But I have a recommendation. Read Nassim Taleb's Bed of Procrustes.
  - noname123 16y ago
    Funny because the next book I'm going to read is Nassim Taleb's "Dynamic Hedging" which I'll try to apply to my volatility trading. IMHO, Taleb is an expert in finance not in life in general.
    - zackattack 16y ago
      ok, so who is an expert on life? and have they published a book?
eavc 16y ago
I downvoted you for the same reason I downvoted the other guy. You are speaking in vague generalities, with authority, on matters about which you are apparently ignorant. Moreover, your propagating this misinformation is detrimental to attitudes about depression, both for those who might be afflicted and the public as a whole. Depression is a serious problem which should be addressed through science, credible education, and consultation with professionals. The comment you are defending is utterly asinine. Persistent depression is far more likely to be the result of cognitive-behavioral factors and/or physiological factors rooted in genetics than it is to be the result of bad life circumstances aside from some negative extremes. Furthermore, you grant that people are "unable to take responsibility for their emotional life" and yet somehow also support the patent contradiction to that idea in suggesting that "fix it or accept it" is acceptable advice. Your final line (in addition to conflating freedom from depression with "being happy") belies a kind of moralistic thinking about mental health. Would you say that broken legs are essential to social stability? Or ulcers?
- zackattack 16y ago
  You make an excellent point. I should have distinguished between severe depression and dysthymia. I do not know much about severe depression but I have plenty of knowledge about dysthymia. Many people casually conflate the two and I made that fundamental error in my post. My apologies.
  - eavc 16y ago
    I appreciate that. I honestly don't care about winning arguments or looking smart on this point. I just wanted to get out my critique of your post for people to read after yours so they can see another angle. Warm regards.

daeken 16y ago

Really? I have an amazing job, great friends, and every toy a man could want. I'm insanely happy with my life, yet I can see myself falling into depression right now. Depression != sadness or stress.

axod 16y ago
Surely that's extremely common. If you have every toy you could want, what's left to do? Surely that's why several millionaires go up, go to excess, lose it all etc.
- daeken 16y ago
  Make more money, start a family, buy a house. Plenty left to be done. Manic/depressive cycles have been a part of my life through good times, bad times, and those in between.
  - axod 16y ago
    Just saying, when everything seems 'easy' and you're making money without really trying, I've felt low at the points when I've experienced that. I think it's completely natural to feel depressed when life doesn't feel like a challenge. It seems to be common amongst autobiographies I've read also.

Mz 16y ago

It gets treated like a medical condition because it has, at least in part, physiological roots. Yes, people can get depressed because their life sucks and they feel powerless to fix it. But people can also get depressed because they are ill, because there is something wrong with their brain chemistry, etc. Some studies have shown a connection between diet and depression. Others indicate that exercising more is more effective than drugs for treating depression. So there is definitely a medical aspect to it, even though, yes, sometimes fixing your life (rather than your body) is what is needed.

throwaway294815 16y ago

No, it's definitely chemical. One of the symptoms of depression is ahedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. It is a very strange experience. One day I went outside and it was a beautiful sunny day, and I couldn't enjoy it. Not that I was so sad the sunny day didn't matter. It did nothing. It was like I was looking at it through a store window, but my world was overcast and gray. One day I went to play at a pool with my newborn son. It was a beautiful day, he was laughing, kids were frolicking and playing. I felt nothing. Not the slightest reaction. As if they weren't there. I have a beautiful life. No financial stress. My family is awesome. My job is awesome. I don't do anything reckless or self-destructive. I have lots of hopes for the near future. But many days, I didn't care if I lived or died, didn't care if I missed so much work I got fired, didn't care if I alienated my family, didn't care that I was cold even though there was a blanket within arm's reach. Medication resulted in a nearly immediate improvement, and a slow return to normalcy. And it is definitely the medication. One day I missed my meds, and I went into a three day long tailspin during which I couldn't care enough about anything to make even small decisions like whether to have lunch or how to put my socks on.

gnosis 16y ago
Out of curiosity, which medication were you taking?
reinhardt 16y ago
I'm also struggling with anhedonia and amotivation for years. I don't have the much of the sadness, hopelessness and other common symptoms so I've discounted the depression hypothesis. Maybe I should reconsider and see a psych.

NZ_Matt 16y ago

Watch this short film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBikj3kRco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBikj3kRco It tells the story of John Kirwin, a legendary Rugby player here in New Zealand. He was supposed to be living the dream as one of the best and toughest Rugby players in the world, yet depression still got the better of him. From the outside it's easy to tell someone to "harden up" but that does no good when the person is going through a personal hell.