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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

#141

Post by c0rtex »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #61
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…

>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.

The article's premise is that having one's core psychological needs go unmet is like having a broken bone.

If you take away the pain from a broken bone, you still have a broken bone. As you say, there is nothing wrong with taking the pain away. But the bone is still broken, and limits you in ways that a healthy bone would not.

Taking away the symptoms of an unwell psyche still leaves you disabled, even if it isn't as outwardly evident as a broken bone.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#142

Post by bbarn »

jolux wrote: post #73
pessimizer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get how authoritarian pill pushers turn people into libertarian bootstrap people, but just because your depression isn't chemical doesn't mean it's your fault, or that there's anything that you can ultimately do about it by yourself. My problem with the pills is that they don't work, because they're targeted at a made-up disease. That the disease that current practice has lumped people into is made up doesn't mean…

It's never talking to people _or_ drugging them though. Since when do psychiatrists send you off with a prescription for Prozac and then never see you again? Answer: they don't. Major depression is treated with drugs and therapy. And it's the combination of both that helps. Rarely if ever are patients given drugs so the psychiatrist can avoid giving them therapy.

Yes they absolutely do. Your average Psychiatrist books in 10-15 minute blocks on demand only, and focuses entirely on what drug you need while you're in the office. It's the patient's responsibility (and if they are lucky, a good psychologist in tandem) to follow up on their med treatment.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#143

Post by jimothyhalpert7 »

xivzgrev wrote: post #42

If you break your arm and then go into the emergency room, you don’t say, “I have pain-in-my-arm disorder”. Haha! How true.

While I'd agree with this phrase, when it's taken out of context, the analogy the author is making is a horrible one. Skipping past the fact that it completely diminishes the near infinite complexity of the human brain, the clear problem is the ease of root cause determination for both situations.

A analogy which would make more sense, albeit still horrible would be: you feel pain in your arm, and decide to wait, until it gets so unbearable, that you see the doctor. The doctor asks you to try and think what could be the cause, and after some time and much thinking, you finally remember that you broke your arm that one time in the 3rd grade, but didn't go to the doctor, because it healed up itself.

Hence, you have a improperly resolved (cured) childhood trauma, that manifested itself after many years, without my immediate recollection of the root cause. In this case, I would only go to the doctor with the symptom. And, while there is one primary root cause, I'd need some pain relief to at least start thinking straight.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#144

Post by Dylan16807 »

c0rtex wrote: post #141
Dylan16807 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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. The article's premise is that having one's core psychological needs go unmet is like having a broken bone. If you take away the pain from a broken bone, you still have a broken bone. As you say, there is nothing wrong with taking the pain away. But the bone is…

If you have a broken bone, it causes you serious problems outside of the pain. The pain is mildly important to alert you, and not very important after that.

Setting the bone is important, but if the pain makes it harder to fix the bone, drug it away asap.

And sometimes non-broken bones ache. No need to suffer it.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#145

Post by firethief »

belorn wrote: post #96

Depression is commonly defined as the inability to recover from negative emotional state. To then call that a symptom of emotional needs seems to miss the distinction. If we compared this to injure and clotting, it would be weird to describe a clotting disorder as a symptom of injuries. Preventing more injuries is likely going to help and is a good step forward, but it do nothing to address the issue on why the recov…

The article is talking about ongoing the emotional effects of ongoing circumstances. I'm not sure how the concept of recovery can be applied when the cause of the state has not abated.

It isn't a clotting disorder if your foot keeps bleeding because you haven't taken the tack out of your shoe.

I don't know how accurate the author's characterisation of depression is, but I don't think a useful analysis will result from applying that definition of the word depression so literally in this particular case.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#146

Post by graycat »

Domenic_S wrote: post #109
graycat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naw, I understood the Chief. I followed your link to that paper -- sure, CBT , once unwind the acronym, sounds fine. That's what I thought would work on the patient in my family (by marriage, not by birth). But CBT didn't work. Not even a little, not a chance. And the patient was just awash in cognitive ability -- brilliant, actually. Or, maybe the brilliance caused seeing more threats and, thus, more anxiety. The us…

I'm sorry to hear that story. I hope this doesn't come off cruel because it isn't meant to be, but there are always outliers -- people for whom the gold standard, or any standard, just doesn't work. It's not a good idea to dismiss a well-studied treatment universally shown to be effective because we don't know if it'll work in a specific case. It's important not to anchor a patient -- already living on the edge -- wi…

> I'm sorry to hear that story. I hope this doesn't come off cruel because it isn't meant to be, but there are always outliers -- people for whom the gold standard, or any standard, just doesn't work.

I urge caution. The Chief 20+ years ago was darned well informed. Talk therapy and anxiety disease had been going for most of the 20th century. I don't know when cognitive approaches started, but, since they are an obvious approach, gotta guess that they have been understood for a long time.

> It's not a good idea to dismiss a well-studied treatment universally shown to be effective because we don't know if it'll work in a specific case.

Right, "dismiss" would be wrong. Trying it as a first step, if only since it's relatively easy and just a mild intervention, sure.

If you and the NLM, etc. link are correct, then it's news in the last 20 or so years.

From the Sheehan data, the Chief, and some more evidence, I have to guess that often, not just for an outlier, genetics can be an important cause. Sure, even then, maybe something cognitive can help one compensate.

My main point here is simple -- IMHO, the OP looks too simplistic.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#147

Post by superuser2 »

smegel wrote: post #79
TeMPOraL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a solution for that already - it's called "divorce". But this is a very bad example overall, because there's insane amount of complexity hiding under the phrase "doesn't love". Love is a very complicated amalgamate of emotions that routinely escapes comprehension of otherwise healthy people. What do you mean she "doesn't love" her husband - did the relationship between them dried out? Did she get bored? Did t…

> We have a solution for that already - it's called "divorce". And we can't extrapolate that to "just change the things in your life that are making you unhappy", because? I understand there are some life circumstances that are difficult to change or rectify. And that sometimes medication might help people cope with difficulties in their life. But let's not pretend that is about mental illness - these people are heal…

What is suicide if not the ultimate malfunction of a person as a system? Under what twisted definition of health can something which causes death be considered healthy when there is just a sliver less of it?

We might consider emotional pain "working as intended" when it alerts its victim to a problem and motivates them to fix it.

When they cannot identify the problem, or it is beyond their (suppressed by pain) power to fix, then the pain is no longer working as intended but is going to have some other effect, such as long-term suffering and death. At that point the alert system is itself a problem.

If Nagios wakes you up in the middle of the night to tell you a server's disk is nearly full, great, fix that server. If Nagios sends a few hundred billion alerts a second about this fact causing DoS on your entire network, yes you still need to fix that disk usage, but shut Nagios up first.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#148

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

jolux wrote: post #73
pessimizer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get how authoritarian pill pushers turn people into libertarian bootstrap people, but just because your depression isn't chemical doesn't mean it's your fault, or that there's anything that you can ultimately do about it by yourself. My problem with the pills is that they don't work, because they're targeted at a made-up disease. That the disease that current practice has lumped people into is made up doesn't mean…

It's never talking to people _or_ drugging them though. Since when do psychiatrists send you off with a prescription for Prozac and then never see you again? Answer: they don't. Major depression is treated with drugs and therapy. And it's the combination of both that helps. Rarely if ever are patients given drugs so the psychiatrist can avoid giving them therapy.

> And it's the combination of both that helps.

I think that's overstating it. The chances of recovery are better on average with the combination, but I don't think anyone has really teased out the extent to which this is additive or synergistic on an individual level versus simply having better odds by betting on two lines instead of one.

Re: Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

#150

Post by sowhatquestion »

themgt wrote: post #10
funkysquid wrote: post #2

> Or if you are outside for a long time in the cold with no jacket, upon feeling very cold, you don’t say that you have "a coldness disorder". A better example for anxiety or depression would be standing inside in a warm room, and despite everyone else in the room being comfortable, you are unable to warm up at all. When you complain, you are told that "everyone gets cold sometimes". This article doesn't seem to have…

The problem with using a purely neurochemical explanation like this is the rates of these disorders differ dramatically between societies and within societies geographically, demographically and over time. It is clear that the United States in particular is, especially in recent years, churning out unprecedented numbers of severely psychologically ill individuals. The idea this is solely due to previously undiagnosed…

> It is clear that the United States in particular is, especially in recent years, churning out unprecedented numbers of severely psychologically ill individuals.

Is it clear? Or have we gotten better at diagnosing conditions that people have been experiencing all along? (Not to mention reducing stigma and making people more likely to admit to having these conditions.) In any case, citation needed.

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