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We dont understand the brain nearly enough to form a cohesive understaning of depression. (or many other brain related things). Now, some are saying that gut

We dont understand the brain nearly enough to form a cohesive understaning of depression. (or many other brain related things). Now, some are saying that gut flora might also be involved. And possible genetic markers. This would create a gigantic number of permutations. I doubt we can ever "fix" depression with just drugs / chemical imbalance. We may help it along. Current treatment for depression, in so far as drugs are concerned, is a doctor throwing an "anti depression" pill at you and askinf you to try it for a while and see how you feel. If you feel worse, or no better, you get to try another. The loop repeats until something works better or until you are out of alternatives. In which case, if you have severe depression, options like electrocution of the brain (forget proper English term) becomes an option. It is often successful, but usually must be repeated and it is not a good thing for the brains other functionality.

graderjs 4y ago
This! Riffing on your comment I think probably what a lot of going on is, what’s called and labeled as depression is really a highly diverse, multi faceted multitude of different things for different people. So people come with a certain affect, certain behavior, and it gets labeled as depression, but actually what’s going on, is probably a whole range of distinctly (and likely because it’s complex: overlapping), pathologies, conditions, or whatever you wanna call them with different causes and different effective treatments and it’s all just getting lumped together. And one reason is because we just don’t know enough exactly as you say. Maybe one reason electroshock “works” (if it does and I’m speculating here and I feel like it sounds like a barbaric torturous medieval treatment) but maybe one reason is because it throws enough entropy into the brain to allow it to reset out of the local “optima” that it had settled into. And obviously there’s multiple you know assumptions going into that statement and I’m just speculating. Riffing on that comment I think it’s interesting to consider that the depressive response may actually be an adaptive evolutionarily response of the brain, the nervous system, the body, the endocrine system, whatever and I think it’s interesting to consider what that adaptation might be trying to achieve. Maybe depression is not the cause of unhappiness, but its result. The collection of symptoms is the result of unhappiness and a response by the body to try to slow somebody down when they’re sort of in a situation that the body brain system whatever has judged is dangerous or not good for them. And that danger may be to mental health or some thing so it’s basically a way to try to take somebody out of circulation to protect them. It’s the self trying to protect itself from a dangerous environment, whatever the parameters of that environment may be: social, environmental, work whatever. I was going to add my personal experience. I might be a bit of an anomaly. I have the full range of emotions, intensely experienced, and all kinds of crazy deep experiences in my life so far but I’ve never been depressed. And I always felt it was some thing I wasn’t gonna let happened to me: I was gonna Always find a way through and to keep moving through whatever situation. So I think in my case I mean riffing on what I previously said the depression response never came up because I always kept moving through whatever I was in and my body didn’t have to take me out of circulation, because I was always finding a way like actively to just keep going and doing what I want.
edgyquant 4y ago
I definitely get the “we don’t understand the brain” aspect. This applies to a ton of things in psychology which I can’t say I’m a fan of. For instance my sister (a psych major) spent thanksgiving arguing with me that babies can be born sociopaths. This is something we definitely can’t state for sure and seems like predetermination with a fancy name.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >I definitely get the “we don’t understand the brain” aspect. This applies to a ton of things in psychology which I can’t say I’m a fan of. For instance my sister (a psych major) spent thanksgiving arguing with me that babies can be born sociopaths. This is something we definitely can’t state for sure and seems like predetermination with a fancy name. I'd go further and say that most things we class as "mental illness" is just a way of categorizing our ignorance. Even drugs that purport to help with "mental illness" at best treat some of the symptoms of the unknown causes of such symptoms often have side effects that can be worse than the symptoms. While significant advances in neuroscience have given us more knowledge about how our brains/mental states work, most attempts at treatment are at the level of trepanning[0] to release evil spirits. Hopefully that will change as we learn more. I'm not holding my breath. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

graderjs 4y ago

This! Riffing on your comment I think probably what a lot of going on is, what’s called and labeled as depression is really a highly diverse, multi faceted multitude of different things for different people. So people come with a certain affect, certain behavior, and it gets labeled as depression, but actually what’s going on, is probably a whole range of distinctly (and likely because it’s complex: overlapping), pathologies, conditions, or whatever you wanna call them with different causes and different effective treatments and it’s all just getting lumped together. And one reason is because we just don’t know enough exactly as you say. Maybe one reason electroshock “works” (if it does and I’m speculating here and I feel like it sounds like a barbaric torturous medieval treatment) but maybe one reason is because it throws enough entropy into the brain to allow it to reset out of the local “optima” that it had settled into. And obviously there’s multiple you know assumptions going into that statement and I’m just speculating. Riffing on that comment I think it’s interesting to consider that the depressive response may actually be an adaptive evolutionarily response of the brain, the nervous system, the body, the endocrine system, whatever and I think it’s interesting to consider what that adaptation might be trying to achieve. Maybe depression is not the cause of unhappiness, but its result. The collection of symptoms is the result of unhappiness and a response by the body to try to slow somebody down when they’re sort of in a situation that the body brain system whatever has judged is dangerous or not good for them. And that danger may be to mental health or some thing so it’s basically a way to try to take somebody out of circulation to protect them. It’s the self trying to protect itself from a dangerous environment, whatever the parameters of that environment may be: social, environmental, work whatever. I was going to add my personal experience. I might be a bit of an anomaly. I have the full range of emotions, intensely experienced, and all kinds of crazy deep experiences in my life so far but I’ve never been depressed. And I always felt it was some thing I wasn’t gonna let happened to me: I was gonna Always find a way through and to keep moving through whatever situation. So I think in my case I mean riffing on what I previously said the depression response never came up because I always kept moving through whatever I was in and my body didn’t have to take me out of circulation, because I was always finding a way like actively to just keep going and doing what I want.

edgyquant 4y ago

I definitely get the “we don’t understand the brain” aspect. This applies to a ton of things in psychology which I can’t say I’m a fan of. For instance my sister (a psych major) spent thanksgiving arguing with me that babies can be born sociopaths. This is something we definitely can’t state for sure and seems like predetermination with a fancy name.

nobody9999 4y ago
>I definitely get the “we don’t understand the brain” aspect. This applies to a ton of things in psychology which I can’t say I’m a fan of. For instance my sister (a psych major) spent thanksgiving arguing with me that babies can be born sociopaths. This is something we definitely can’t state for sure and seems like predetermination with a fancy name. I'd go further and say that most things we class as "mental illness" is just a way of categorizing our ignorance. Even drugs that purport to help with "mental illness" at best treat some of the symptoms of the unknown causes of such symptoms often have side effects that can be worse than the symptoms. While significant advances in neuroscience have given us more knowledge about how our brains/mental states work, most attempts at treatment are at the level of trepanning[0] to release evil spirits. Hopefully that will change as we learn more. I'm not holding my breath. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]