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That or people become vegan because they have depression and anxiety and are just trying to find a lifestyle that will help manage the symptoms. Then the vegan

That or people become vegan because they have depression and anxiety and are just trying to find a lifestyle that will help manage the symptoms. Then the vegan diet works, and they keep on not eating meat because their depression and anxiety actually got better. Not as good as someone that doesn't struggle with those from the get go, but better. That's another correlation, and if true it would actually mean that not eating meat is good for depression and anxiety in some people.

sparrish 5y ago
I may be misunderstanding you but I don't think so. While eating meat = depressed While eating vegan = depression and anxiety got better I would expect the results to show vegans had less depression if that were true. That's not what the study found.
- TheDong 5y ago
  The point of the parent comment is that it is possible that having a correlation like this is actually an inverse of the causation. You're indeed misundestanding their point. An example of a case with inverse causation vs correlation is "A study found out that there is a strong correlation between the number of firemen at a house on fire and how large the fire is. As such, we should send fewer firemen to fires to ensure they are smaller". The parent poster isn't claiming the same sort of reverse-causation is true here, but merely pointing out that it's possible. To explain more clearly the parent poster's hypothetical: let's say there's the normal population, which is say 20% depressed and 5% vegan. Let's say there's a second population which suffers an 80% depression rate while eating meat, and a 50% depression rate while vegan. If that second population entirely goes vegan, they now have a 50% depression rate, which is 30% higher than the normal population, so a study would show "this group of vegans are more depressed than a typical group of meat eaters", but at the same time it would be true that being vegan improved their rates of depression.

sparrish 5y ago

I may be misunderstanding you but I don't think so. While eating meat = depressed While eating vegan = depression and anxiety got better I would expect the results to show vegans had less depression if that were true. That's not what the study found.

TheDong 5y ago
The point of the parent comment is that it is possible that having a correlation like this is actually an inverse of the causation. You're indeed misundestanding their point. An example of a case with inverse causation vs correlation is "A study found out that there is a strong correlation between the number of firemen at a house on fire and how large the fire is. As such, we should send fewer firemen to fires to ensure they are smaller". The parent poster isn't claiming the same sort of reverse-causation is true here, but merely pointing out that it's possible. To explain more clearly the parent poster's hypothetical: let's say there's the normal population, which is say 20% depressed and 5% vegan. Let's say there's a second population which suffers an 80% depression rate while eating meat, and a 50% depression rate while vegan. If that second population entirely goes vegan, they now have a 50% depression rate, which is 30% higher than the normal population, so a study would show "this group of vegans are more depressed than a typical group of meat eaters", but at the same time it would be true that being vegan improved their rates of depression.