Live data from Hacker News

Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

sciencebulletin.org

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#41

Hm, can someone help me figure out what this is saying more rigorously? Specifically, is it saying Pr(Dislikes Rewards | Depressed) is high, or is it saying Pr(Depressed | Dislikes Rewards) is high, or both?

Nice statistical property: this is the same thing.

P(B|A)>P(B) P(A|B)>P(A)

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#42
post #13

I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed…

> I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. > There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all. And that's relying on the parents to even be looking for issues in their offspring. If they're narcissistic, the child could go undiagnosed.

You can't blame parents for their child's depression.

You can't expect even the most seasoned psychiatric worker to be able to diagnose depression from sight. Currently self-reporting is the only way to diagnose. Observation simply doesn't work.

There was a great doco on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql) where they had a house full of people with various different mental illnesses, and trained psychiatric professionals watching on CCTV. Over the course of the show, not one of them made a correct diagnosis by observing behaviour. So how can parents be expected to pick up the signs?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#43

“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help fo…

Your take that depression is caused by bad home circumstances is true for some cases, but there are many causes for depression in between, most of them not even close to being understood. Genetics, immune disease, thyroid problems, etc. The list is pretty huge.

As for expecting parents to notice; a trained psychiatric professional cannot diagnose depression by regular life observation alone. They rely on self reporting, or suicide attempts. Anything less than that is extremely hard to pick up on.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#44
post #13

I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed…

According to Wikipedia, Bipolar II is hard to diagnose. A lot of personality disorders also have an onset in late youth/early adulthood. IOW, you cannot diagnose those yet at a pre-teen age.

There's a big taboo concerning depression. It isn't regarded as a disease, in social life those who are negative tend to get avoided.

As for rewards like presents, I simply don't get the whole theatre behind it. It is just trading, often nowhere near original, and I too often don't know what on earth to buy for someone, ending up with cheesy things. You ask something, and you either get exactly what you want (no surprise), you get something you don't want and did not ask for (negative surprise) or you get something you did not ask for and do want (positive surprise). Now, how to make someone positively surprised if they already feel they got pretty much everything? If the only things they do want are rather expensive? If they don't need yet another cheap thing such as perfume while they already have their own expensive perfume brand which bottle is not even half empty? My point is that it can be extremely difficult to satisfy someone's needs. Not merely mine; the ones of all my peers. Now consider I was like this as a child as well (probably why I am like this now).

Perhaps therein lies the difference. The non depressed are happy to receive a gift, never mind that it is merely a custom whereas the depressed see through the custom. One could argue the latter is smarter, but is that true from a biological PoV?

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#45

“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help fo…

> Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help for their kid.

Depression definitely can be caused by abuse. In fact if you're being abused you are probably also depressed.

Depression and other mental illnesses are also often caused by things that can't be externally influenced at all.

Casually linking poor parenting with mental illness enforces a stigma that discourages people from seeking treatment for themselves or for their children.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#46

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

Isn't it more likely that these scientists do actually know what they are doing, and aren't actually the incompetent bumbling fools you seem to think? I'm baffled that there is always a response to any scientific research along the lines of "Well, these scientists didn't take into account! They need to compensate for ."

It's psychology I would not place high bets on scientists actually knowing what they are doing.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#47

Wait, so they had kids choose a door and there was a 50% chance they get a point or lose a point? And that's what constitutes scientific research these days? Did they even account for the kids figuring out that whether they win or lose is completely random and there's no skill or pattern involved? You know, like "what's even the point of trying if it's all random anyway"? Maybe that's why some kids weren't thrilled t…

Isn't it more likely that these scientists do actually know what they are doing, and aren't actually the incompetent bumbling fools you seem to think? I'm baffled that there is always a response to any scientific research along the lines of "Well, these scientists didn't take into account! They need to compensate for ."

Quite aside from the fact that appeal to authority is not how science is supposed to work, the current reproducibility crisis suggests that this sort of response need not be as baffling as you seem to find it.

To be clear, I doubt GP has accurately identified a confounder here; the comparison is between children diagnosed with depression and those not so diagnosed, performing the same task, so it's not as though differential response on the task is being used to identify depression. But the larger point that a result need not be taken on faith remains valid, as does the general advisability of knowing what you're talking about before you do so - which GP regrettably seems here to have overlooked.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#48
post #44
post #13

I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed…

According to Wikipedia, Bipolar II is hard to diagnose. A lot of personality disorders also have an onset in late youth/early adulthood. IOW, you cannot diagnose those yet at a pre-teen age. There's a big taboo concerning depression. It isn't regarded as a disease, in social life those who are negative tend to get avoided. As for rewards like presents, I simply don't get the whole theatre behind it. It is just tradin…

I grew up with pretty left wing parents who were against consumerism. I liked the gifts and the principal of a fun pagan silly ritual where be re-express our love for one another. I never felt displeasure with being given a gift in my life. Guilt, maybe, that I couldn't show more pleasure in the situation, but kids are pretty good at hiding their emotions. Sometimes the act drops, and then observers just say you're having a bad day.

I find the idea that depressed people have a gift at seeing through fakery as troubling. It is a correlation and causation thing. If I was depressed everything seemed shit, even the stuff that wasn't fake, so of course it might look enlightened in certain situations. I think a lot of those studies are flawed pop-psychology type stuff that I wouldn't put much value in.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#49
post #45

“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help fo…

> Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help for their kid. Depression definitely can be caused by abuse. In fact if you're being abused you are probably also depressed. Depression and other mental illnesses are also often caused by things th…

I didn't read GP as necessarily being about abuse, but even stuff like the parents arguing in front of the child.

Re: Depressed children respond differently to rewards than other kids

#50
post #45

“If they’re persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, those are markers that may indicate depression, even in kids as young as 3 or 4, and we would recommend that parents get them evaluated.” Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help fo…

> Speaking from personal experience, if a 3 or 4 year old is displaying symptoms of depression, there's shit happening at home and the parents are neck-deep in denial about their role and pigs will fly before they get help for their kid. Depression definitely can be caused by abuse. In fact if you're being abused you are probably also depressed. Depression and other mental illnesses are also often caused by things th…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN