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This explanation does not work for all types of depression. There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. We need to be more careful in our language, the word depression has become overused, much like the drugs used to treat it.
This explanation does not work for all types of depression. There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. We need to be more careful in our language, the word depression has become overused, much like the drugs used to treat it.
>There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. If someone truly feels and believes they have a "wonderful" life, it would seem they are not suffering from crippling depression. Though what I think you're trying to say is there are people who are depressed even though they seem to have all of their basic human needs being met.
Why did my comment get flagged? I assume this was a mistake, so reposting: tl;dr: Many people diagnosed with depression are actually just sad because modern society is kinda lame. (The article argues this point cogently, and I agree with it.) [I slightly edited this because I think people thought I was saying that I think all depressed people are faking or something]
Or, with slightly less woo-woo: is it any wonder so many of us feel hopeless when we are, collectively, shitting in the pool and force feeding each other hollow materialistic junk via brainwashing advertising.
Yeah, I'm gonna say it: this disease, this depression so many of us suffer, is a result of a sick society. But our hyper-individualistic culture blames the individual, then lets, no expects, that doctors prescribe them addictive drugs that don't work and are terrible to try to stop taking.
Seriously, what the hell are we doing? If I treated my dog like this I'd end up in court for animal cruelty.
Why did my comment get flagged? I assume this was a mistake, so reposting: tl;dr: Many people diagnosed with depression are actually just sad because modern society is kinda lame. (The article argues this point cogently, and I agree with it.) [I slightly edited this because I think people thought I was saying that I think all depressed people are faking or something]
I found, over the years of being on HN, that there's a sort of forceful response that always comes to these types of comments about depression, along with downvoting. The responses say basically, "Don't talk about what you don't know. Many people have real, chemical depression, and your comment that it's a product of life circumstances is not helpful ". I was always a but puzzled about the regularity with which that…
"Professor Andrew Scull of Princeton, writing in the Lancet, explained that attributing depression to spontaneously low serotonin is “deeply misleading and unscientific”. Dr David Healy told me: “There was never any basis for it, ever. It was just marketing copy.”"
This.
I have been saying this on HN and other forums for years.
Each time I get downvoted for how dare I suggest that it is other things in a person's life and that clinical "depression" is unscientific.
Most people would rather play victim i think
It is a paradoxical issue though, because chemicals can indeed play a crucial role to overcoming depression.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. If someone truly feels and believes they have a "wonderful" life, it would seem they are not suffering from crippling depression. Though what I think you're trying to say is there are people who are depressed even though they seem to have all of their basic human needs being met.
It's entirely possible for someone to suffer from depression despite knowing that they have a good life.
Maybe having all those things actually isn't what leads people to feel grateful for being alive.
It still seems many people believe there is strong scientific evidence to the "chemical imbalance" theory as an independent cause of depression, which is a myth. It is a paradoxical issue though, because chemicals can indeed play a crucial role to overcoming depression.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There are people who have wonderful lives, fulfilling jobs, happy families, who are still depressed. If someone truly feels and believes they have a "wonderful" life, it would seem they are not suffering from crippling depression. Though what I think you're trying to say is there are people who are depressed even though they seem to have all of their basic human needs being met.
It's entirely possible for someone to suffer from depression despite knowing that they have a good life.
A lot of people would say that making 75k and healthy is a "good life".
Yet we know that most of us are in dead end jobs and in a constant rat race.
A lot of people,including researchers, have such low standards and they look at other people with those standards and think "but they have a good life!"