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Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

psychologytoday.com

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Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#61

Post by Dylan16807 »

pc2g4d wrote: post #19

Amen to this article. As one who myself once believed my depression "came out of nowhere" (but which, in retrospect, was an obvious symptom of my emotionally destructive family and school environment) and who tried for many years to smother those feelings with antidepressants, I feel strongly that this article presents a wiser path. Evolutionarily speaking, it seems likely that depression/anxiety are there for some p…

> Evolutionarily speaking, it seems likely that depression/anxiety are there for some purpose, and yet we treat them both like meaningless pain meant only to be banished using drugs. I believe both are signals that something in our environment is not working for us. They indicate emotional or physical needs unmet---needs for safety, autonomy, connection, etc.

> Often the individual suffering is fundamentally unaware of their own circumstances. I didn't realize how messed up my family relationships were growing up until much later. There are various reasons for this unawareness, but I believe the depression/anxiety are there to force our conscious self and the people around us to acknowledge that something is wrong.

If a situation is causing no problems outside of depression/anxiety, and you took away the depression/anxiety mechanism, there would be nothing wrong with it.

If there are other problems, then piling depression on top makes it harder to fix.

A lot of medical conditions cause chronic pain. The pain helpfully signals "something is wrong" once, and then keeps unhelpfully reminding over and over. You want to treat the pain itself in that situation. Sometimes the pain is the only thing you need to treat at all.

Being an indicator of other problems does not make chronic pain useful. Depression is similarly crippling and unhelpful.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#62

Post by haberman »

tbirdz wrote: post #56
haberman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a purely mathematical perspective, how would evolution ever select for a trait that causes someone to destroy themselves for the benefit of others? It seems like any characteristic that prevents the individual from reproducing is by definition not selected for. But I could be misunderstanding something. Maybe it could work in the case of people who are already parents. Favoring the group could increase the likel…

The individual would still have other relatives who would pass on the genes, like sisters, brothers, other family members. If the individual's sacrifice helps the group survive, their genes would be passed on in those relatives. Also note that the gene would only be activated under a certain set of circumstances, so individuals could have the "self-sacrifice" gene and pass it to their children, even if they never enc…

That explanation doesn't make sense to me. Your brothers/sisters etc. have similar genes, but they don't have your genes. The theory of evolution is that the most fit genes propagate. So if your brothers/sisters propagate but you don't, then your brothers/sisters genes (along with whatever mutations they might have) are being selected over yours, just as if you had some mutation that made you overall less fit.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#63

Post by haberman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55
haberman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a purely mathematical perspective, how would evolution ever select for a trait that causes someone to destroy themselves for the benefit of others? It seems like any characteristic that prevents the individual from reproducing is by definition not selected for. But I could be misunderstanding something. Maybe it could work in the case of people who are already parents. Favoring the group could increase the likel…

It's easy to make evolutionary just-so stories and they're usually worthless anyway, but here's my attempt at one: as an animal, if you reach a certain age and are not already a parent, it means you're deficient. It's better for the gene pool if you die without reproducing. If you're a parent and you did all that was needed for the offspring to survive the early development period, you're no longer needed and probabl…

Yes I generally hate evolutionary just-so stories.

> if you reach a certain age and are not already a parent, it means you're deficient. It's better for the gene pool if you die without reproducing.

This explanation makes no sense to me. Evolution doesn't select for the overall gene pool AIUI, it selects for fit individuals. I can't see how, even in theory, this explanation would be plausible.

> If you're a parent and you did all that was needed for the offspring to survive the early development period, you're no longer needed and probably better off dying instead of consuming resources your children need.

This explanation sounds at least mathematically plausible to me.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

darkclarity wrote: post #20
LandoCalrissian wrote: post #5

This is a terrible article that completely treats depression as the fault of the individual. Pretty irresponsible frankly.

The way I got out of those sorts of issues was by noticing that the medical system is inadequate. It is geared towards hiding symptoms with drugs - to get people back into work, even if those people are a mess inside. It's all down to personal responsibility. You have to find the drive inside to constantly push. To forget the victim mentality that society encourages. To fix one problem at a time. To fight the hellish…

> It's all down to personal responsibility. You have to find the drive inside to constantly push. To forget the victim mentality that society encourages. To fix one problem at a time. To fight the hellish mode that your mind has enabled.

This is what doesn't work. This approach is wrong - we already know you can't rely on peoples' willpower in normal tasks, what makes people think it will work with issues that by definition kill whatever willpower reserves you have? Talking about personal responsibility didn't cure obeseity, didn't cure alcoholism, didn't cure drug abuse - so it sure as hell isn't going to cure depression.

Now I'm not saying this is equal to putting all hope in drugs. Maybe there are other "social" approaches, but it won't help to tell people that depression is their choice.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#65

Post by berntb »

haberman wrote: post #52
tbirdz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First let me preface this by saying that I have no training in psychology or related fields, so this comment may be complete bunk. I think that suicide could have some evolutionary advantage in a group. Say there is a member of a group who has become sick, injured, or otherwise incapacitated and is unable to contribute to the group. The group must spend more work to take care of the member than they receive back from…

From a purely mathematical perspective, how would evolution ever select for a trait that causes someone to destroy themselves for the benefit of others? It seems like any characteristic that prevents the individual from reproducing is by definition not selected for. But I could be misunderstanding something. Maybe it could work in the case of people who are already parents. Favoring the group could increase the likel…

Read "The Selfish Gene", or some other book that go over this research. That book is a good choice, it is probably one of the best popular science books you will read in your life.

(The research is well corroborated, except by some Marxist biologists. :-) )

You can start by checking this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#66

Post by smegel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45
smegel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, but I also think a lot of "non-real depression" is too easily diagnosed as the real thing. A lot of depressed people could be "cured" by just changing circumstances in their life (not that it is always easy, but saying there is stuff in your life you can't change and it is making you depressed, doesn't make it a mental illness). But you have worn out doctors facing a tough choice: do the near impos…

I disagree about the way this choice is painted. It's never "just changing circumstances" - people who have problems that directly caused by something in their lives will stumble upon the solution by sheer luck. We should actually be grateful that there are pills that for many people can insta-cure or significantly reduce the symptoms of depression. It means they get a shot at much better life in exchange of having t…

> I'm happy every time we can find a pill for solving a problem - because the pill actually works

If a woman is depressed because she is stuck in an unhappy marriage with a man she doesn't love...and she then pops a pill and becomes "happy"...I am not sure that meets my definition of "works".

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#67

Post by cnp »

themgt wrote: post #51
retbull wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But drugs are awesome :D Seriously though, compared to being depressed when you can't fix it because you don't have any idea that something is wrong, drugs are fucking amazing. The shitty part is people end up trapped now as the drugs can fuel the negativity which lead to the depression in the first place.

I actually agree drugs are useful for treating mental issues, I just disagree that people need a daily drip-drip-drip of e.g. serotonin or dopamine to function. Drugs can be extremely helpful in treating acute mental issues and helping people "break through" or inoculate themselves against episodes of illness, see e.g. psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine for treatments of e.g. anxiety/depression/PTSD/psychological health in t…

For more information on trials being conducted using the drugs described above, see MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies): http://www.maps.org/.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

Domenic_S wrote: post #58
graycat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My info was first hand from the Chief of Psychiatry, Westchester County Hospital, NY, USA. He seemed darned serious, bright, well informed, enormously experienced, and competent.

Perhaps you misunderstood the Chief; CBT is the gold standard for treating anxiety-related disorders. See this meta-analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263389/

The interesting thing IMO is that CBT is actually about totally ignoring the "underlying reasons" of your problem, and instead it's about literally hacking your mind to deal with the symptoms. Drugs are a hardware solution, CBT is a software solution, and all that searching for problems in your life is mostly attempts at patching up datasets provided by third parties.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#70

Post by jolux »

themgt wrote: post #11
jolux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean unsubstantiated? If you mean it's less than certain than sure, but SSRIs and SNRIs and NaSSAs and such improve depression greatly for many patients. That at least says something about serotonin levels in patients with depression.

"Opiates improve pain-in-arm symptoms greatly for many patients. That at least says something about opiate levels in patients with pain-in-arm."

Indeed. And if you take an SSRI for pain-in-arm and realize it doesn't do shit, then perhaps pain-in-arm isn't related to serotonin levels?
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