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> the team argues that the understanding of depression conveyed on many sites is often "based on circular logic," which could leave those aiming to understand t

> the team argues that the understanding of depression conveyed on many sites is often "based on circular logic," which could leave those aiming to understand their low mood worse off. They reference recent research that found that emotional regulation is more successful when people were aware of the causes of their suffering – if educational material bills depression as causative, however, some of those with the condition may not look further to identify potentially-addressable causative factors. I have been under the impression that the deal with ‘clinical depression’ is that there is no reasonable cause - you feel depressed because of your brain chemistry, not because of your circumstances. You would feel depressed regardless of whether your life was good or bad, because it’s not a response to your life, it’s an aberrant behavior by the part of your brain that makes you feel feelings. And to that end, to the contrary of what’s written in the article, trying to find a reason for your depression is a trap - one of your brain’s favorite things to do is to feel an emotion and then find a cause to pin it on. But if the cause is really just weird brain stuff - you risk false accusations or false positives when searching for the source of your depression. I must feel depressed because of my relationship. I must feel depressed because of climate change. I must feel depressed because my kid is away at college, because my car needs work, because I haven’t had sex for a while, etc. All of those things may very well be problems in your life worth addressing - but are they actually the cause of your feelings of depression? Or is that just your brain doing stuff you don’t want it to do?

ghostly_s 2y ago
That is one theory of depression-but it is very much not the only one, and is not how it is defined in the DSM, which generally relies in purely symptomatic definitions of mental illness.
rexpop 2y ago
> you feel depressed because of your brain chemistry, not because of your circumstances. Would that it were so simple. Circumstances can, of course, impact brain chemistry and, over time, neural architecture. Classic example is the learned helplessness of rats[0]. In this context, we know the cause of the depression, because it's the independent variable of our experiment! Is it irrational to project the his framing to learned helplessness or "psychomotor retardation" in the wild? > the cause is really just weird brain stuff Is it weird or is it evolutionarily selected for? > it’s an aberrant behavior Is it abberant or is it consequent? You may benefit from the perspective of Sapolsky's (now 14 year old) lecture on the basics of depression[1] in which he asserts that it's a response to repeated trauma. 0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635710002901 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... 1. https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc
- hirako2000 2y ago
  Even just entertaining the idea, that depression is a response from healthy individuals, cannot be tolerated.
  - rented_mule 2y ago
    What does it mean to be a "health individual"? If it means being completely invulnerable to any decline in health, then you're 100% correct. But only the immortal fit that description. Soldiers going into battle are among the most physically healthy individuals on earth. And the military would tell us that they are in good mental health or they wouldn't give them control of weapons. Far too many come out of the experience with extreme mental health challenges, even if they remain physically healthy. It's easy to imagine that one path to depression is a spiral where challenging circumstances lead to slightly weaker mental health, which increases vulnerability to challenging circumstances, repeat. It's especially easy for me to imagine because I ran down that spiral before, and for decades after, my depression set in. Part of the immense difficulty of recovery for me is the painful crawl back up that spiral, processing the old challenges as I go, all under the guidance of a trained professional.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Your statement is ambiguous, since it confuses "health in totality" versus "a healthy response" to other causes. Compare: "Entertaining the idea that [screaming] is a response from healthy individuals cannot be tolerated." Obviously, such a statement would be a dramatic overreach. * Screaming because a rubber snake was thrown at your face? That's actually a very healthy response, in the short term. * Screaming because you got stabbed in the leg with a fork? Also a healthy response, but you'll need to get that unhealthy leg looked at. * Screaming because you just won the lottery? Healthy response, just questionable financial skills. * Screaming for no apparent reason? ... Probably not a healthy response. Anyway, at this point we do not know enough about depression to conclusively declare that it is never serving any adaptive purpose. It would be a shame if the fork-stabbing patient were to be "treated" by sticking a syringe of muscle-relaxant into their voicebox.
    - 2y ago
didgeoridoo 2y ago
Sometimes depression can be triggered not by life circumstances alone, but by your involuntary cognitive responses to those circumstances — interpreting innocuous social cues as devastatingly negative, for example. Maybe you have no objective “reason” to be depressed, but none of us has access to objective reality unfiltered by our own (sometimes broken) interpretations. It’s a perfectly “reasonable” reaction to feel depressed if your brain is telling you that everyone hates you, that nothing you do matters, and that the world would be a better place without you. These misinterpretations don’t always come out of the blue — sometimes they are learned behaviors, perhaps coping mechanisms for a previous environment that have now become maladaptive. This seems to be why interventions that focus on disrupting your subjective interpretation of reality (like CBT, but also psychedelics and even electroconvulsive therapy) can be helpful in treating depression. If you can retrain your brain to respond in more helpful ways, you can avoid spiraling into self-reinforcing depressive thought patterns. Neurotransmitter reuptake modulators like SSRIs (and stimulants like bupropion) can also play a role, mostly by giving you the energy and mental “space” to engage in reshaping cognitive behaviors. I think that’s also why they have a pretty mixed track record of being long-term helpful in the absence of more cognitively-focused interventions. (IANAP but I’m married to one so live these conversations daily).
bongodongobob 2y ago
That's not necessarily true. A year and a half ago, within three months, my fiance left me, a close friend died in an accident, another close friend went to prison because of sex crimes, I lost my job, and had to move out of my home. I'm still dealing with it because my life was ripped apart in an instant. I went from on top of the world to nearly homeless extremely quickly. Did it affect my brain chemistry? Maybe. But having the rug pulled out from under you can certainly trigger deep depression.
kzrdude 2y ago
> regardless of whether your life was good or bad, because it’s not a response to your life, it’s an aberrant behavior by the part of your brain that makes you feel feelings. I think that's a reasonable starting point but there is so much we do that can influence brain chemistry and lead us down a spiral, such as avoiding behavior, procrastination or indulging in things while avoiding other needs such as sleep or food..

ghostly_s 2y ago

That is one theory of depression-but it is very much not the only one, and is not how it is defined in the DSM, which generally relies in purely symptomatic definitions of mental illness.

rexpop 2y ago

> you feel depressed because of your brain chemistry, not because of your circumstances. Would that it were so simple. Circumstances can, of course, impact brain chemistry and, over time, neural architecture. Classic example is the learned helplessness of rats[0]. In this context, we know the cause of the depression, because it's the independent variable of our experiment! Is it irrational to project the his framing to learned helplessness or "psychomotor retardation" in the wild? > the cause is really just weird brain stuff Is it weird or is it evolutionarily selected for? > it’s an aberrant behavior Is it abberant or is it consequent? You may benefit from the perspective of Sapolsky's (now 14 year old) lecture on the basics of depression[1] in which he asserts that it's a response to repeated trauma. 0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635710002901 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... 1. https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc

hirako2000 2y ago
Even just entertaining the idea, that depression is a response from healthy individuals, cannot be tolerated.
- rented_mule 2y ago
  What does it mean to be a "health individual"? If it means being completely invulnerable to any decline in health, then you're 100% correct. But only the immortal fit that description. Soldiers going into battle are among the most physically healthy individuals on earth. And the military would tell us that they are in good mental health or they wouldn't give them control of weapons. Far too many come out of the experience with extreme mental health challenges, even if they remain physically healthy. It's easy to imagine that one path to depression is a spiral where challenging circumstances lead to slightly weaker mental health, which increases vulnerability to challenging circumstances, repeat. It's especially easy for me to imagine because I ran down that spiral before, and for decades after, my depression set in. Part of the immense difficulty of recovery for me is the painful crawl back up that spiral, processing the old challenges as I go, all under the guidance of a trained professional.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Your statement is ambiguous, since it confuses "health in totality" versus "a healthy response" to other causes. Compare: "Entertaining the idea that [screaming] is a response from healthy individuals cannot be tolerated." Obviously, such a statement would be a dramatic overreach. * Screaming because a rubber snake was thrown at your face? That's actually a very healthy response, in the short term. * Screaming because you got stabbed in the leg with a fork? Also a healthy response, but you'll need to get that unhealthy leg looked at. * Screaming because you just won the lottery? Healthy response, just questionable financial skills. * Screaming for no apparent reason? ... Probably not a healthy response. Anyway, at this point we do not know enough about depression to conclusively declare that it is never serving any adaptive purpose. It would be a shame if the fork-stabbing patient were to be "treated" by sticking a syringe of muscle-relaxant into their voicebox.
  - 2y ago

didgeoridoo 2y ago

Sometimes depression can be triggered not by life circumstances alone, but by your involuntary cognitive responses to those circumstances — interpreting innocuous social cues as devastatingly negative, for example. Maybe you have no objective “reason” to be depressed, but none of us has access to objective reality unfiltered by our own (sometimes broken) interpretations. It’s a perfectly “reasonable” reaction to feel depressed if your brain is telling you that everyone hates you, that nothing you do matters, and that the world would be a better place without you. These misinterpretations don’t always come out of the blue — sometimes they are learned behaviors, perhaps coping mechanisms for a previous environment that have now become maladaptive. This seems to be why interventions that focus on disrupting your subjective interpretation of reality (like CBT, but also psychedelics and even electroconvulsive therapy) can be helpful in treating depression. If you can retrain your brain to respond in more helpful ways, you can avoid spiraling into self-reinforcing depressive thought patterns. Neurotransmitter reuptake modulators like SSRIs (and stimulants like bupropion) can also play a role, mostly by giving you the energy and mental “space” to engage in reshaping cognitive behaviors. I think that’s also why they have a pretty mixed track record of being long-term helpful in the absence of more cognitively-focused interventions. (IANAP but I’m married to one so live these conversations daily).

bongodongobob 2y ago

That's not necessarily true. A year and a half ago, within three months, my fiance left me, a close friend died in an accident, another close friend went to prison because of sex crimes, I lost my job, and had to move out of my home. I'm still dealing with it because my life was ripped apart in an instant. I went from on top of the world to nearly homeless extremely quickly. Did it affect my brain chemistry? Maybe. But having the rug pulled out from under you can certainly trigger deep depression.

kzrdude 2y ago

> regardless of whether your life was good or bad, because it’s not a response to your life, it’s an aberrant behavior by the part of your brain that makes you feel feelings. I think that's a reasonable starting point but there is so much we do that can influence brain chemistry and lead us down a spiral, such as avoiding behavior, procrastination or indulging in things while avoiding other needs such as sleep or food..