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Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

nautil.us

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Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#11

Post by arbitrage »

68c12c16 wrote: post #7

I think the researches described in the article might have over-generalized the concept of "depression" a bit... I feel what we call "depression" is actually a spectrum of symptoms -- although those symptoms might have certain shared common traits (such as strong inertia and not wanting to do anything), they actually could be quite different in other aspects. For instance, when you are not doing anything, it could be…

It's nice that you have feelings, but they're likely using the clinical definition of Major Depressive Disorder, which takes the guess work out of defining who the sample group is.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#12

Post by schackbrian »

This reminded me of a Scientific American article from nine years ago about the evolutionary roots of depression. It says that depression is a useful adaptation:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolu...

Dr. Stephen Ilardi from the University of Kansas takes the opposite position. In his book, The Depression Cure, he says that depression is a disease of modernity. "[O]ur bodies were never designed for the sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, frenzied pace of twenty-first century life."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drv3BP0Fdi8

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#13

Post by [deleted] »

jack_pp wrote: post #9
tw1010 wrote: post #2

Does anything have an evolutionary "purpose"? I mean really. Why, really, is the human tailbone less "purposeful" than our hair?

Not having a tailbone has probably not been an evolutionary advantage. Hair is an evolutionary advantage, not a big one but bald women don't mate as successfully as women with nice hair do, on average

[deleted]

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#14

Post by milankovic »

tw1010 wrote: post #2

Does anything have an evolutionary "purpose"? I mean really. Why, really, is the human tailbone less "purposeful" than our hair?

Well, think of it like this: Evolution is a process, and the process is the purpose. And sometimes we end up with results that are "wrong". But this is never the end of the path.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#15

Post by badosu »

bhouston wrote: post #3

I think it could.... It is the "do not keep doing the same thing if it isn't working". Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc. I wonder if antidepressants in some cases encourage an individual to stick out/survive a situation they should really be escaping from?

> Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc.

I wonder if this is something new or that only was misreported or not documented.

Maybe living on modern society in huge metropolitan areas, where no local sense of community, thus lacking cooperative behaviour incentive indeed has these effects as human society never would have scaled evolutionary to this level before.

Or maybe it was just underrepresented chronologically and just now we have the luxury of mostly not starving if we don't work to get the food, allied with the huge complexity layer of things to beware about these days.

So fundamentally my question is if we just would not report or pay attention or attribute to sobrenatural stuff, like demon possession and indeed there was already depression and other 'modern' mental issues; or if this always existed and just now we have the luxury to look at it.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#16

Post by 40acres »

Something about this article reminds of Venkatesh Rao article: We Are All Architects Now

"A crisis is too good a thing to waste. Not only should you have as many as you have time for, you should succumb to each as quickly and completely as possible, and then bounce back as quickly as you can so you can have another one. Resistance is not just futile, it is counter-productive.

This aesthetically appropriate and functionally necessary response to a crisis is a crash. If you don’t crash, it wasn’t a crisis. A healthy, crisis-ridden life is one that evolves rapidly, one crash at a time. So it stands to reason that navigating such a healthy life well involves crashing early and crashing often (CECO; life is a FEFO in CECO out, or FICO system)."

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/17/we-are-all-architects-...

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#17

Post by louithethrid »

jackhack wrote: post #6
bhouston wrote: post #3

I think it could.... It is the "do not keep doing the same thing if it isn't working". Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc. I wonder if antidepressants in some cases encourage an individual to stick out/survive a situation they should really be escaping from?

I think you're onto it. If an organism is not successful in whatever circumstance, then it is for the benefit of the herd (and species) that the individual drop out and not propagate its genes further. It is a braking mechanism. A psychic-emotional watchdog.

I think that is to one dimensional a view. Many organisms come into situations they are not really fit to survive- society is complex, there are lots of dark corners where specialisation is needed. If you are a social party animal and by inheritance suddenly have to become a 24/7 CEO of a company,without any breaks and non stop political power plays - depression is not indicating that you are unworthy or something. It indicates that you want to migrate in society, away from a unhealthy environment- you detach yourself from the people you have to deal with and wait for reattachment with a better crowd. Sort of the eject capsule from bad influence you do not want to adapt.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#18

Post by mamon »

jackhack wrote: post #6
bhouston wrote: post #3

I think it could.... It is the "do not keep doing the same thing if it isn't working". Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc. I wonder if antidepressants in some cases encourage an individual to stick out/survive a situation they should really be escaping from?

I think you're onto it. If an organism is not successful in whatever circumstance, then it is for the benefit of the herd (and species) that the individual drop out and not propagate its genes further. It is a braking mechanism. A psychic-emotional watchdog.

I don't think that suicide (logicaly following from "not propagate its genes further") is an actual objective of depression. It is probably more about forcing an individual to think their problem through - that's what you do when you are depressed, constantly thinking about all the things that went wrong in your life.

Thing is, in primitive, savannah environment all problems were simple enough that they could be solved by just few hours/days of thinking and planning. Nowadays we live in civilized society which poses much bigger challenges, which cannot be easily fixed. That's why depression can extend to weeks/months, and after that time it becomes chronic condition, even when the actual problems that caused it has already gone away.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#19

Post by danharaj »

doctorcroc wrote: post #8

Tangential, but this psychologist argues that depression evolved as a behavioral shutdown mechanism to prevent humans from over-investing in tactics or behaviors that did not yield any benefit (from a dopaminergic standpoint) -- https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201604... . The reasoning is that we conserve energy by not pursuing "dead-ends". Naturally, this evolutionary mechanism is thrown for a…

> this evolutionary mechanism is thrown for a loop in an existence where survival is assured, and meaning becomes the main spectre psychologically.

Most people who suffer from depression because of environmental factors have no real substantial changes they can make to their life that would resolve the root issue of their depression.

I could "fix" my depression once I had an independent high paying job that let me live anywhere and choose to live in the way I need to live in order to be happy. My episodes are far between now and, again, caused by things I don't have enough control over.

What I'm saying is that we paper over the contradictions of the illusion of self determination peddled to us in rich Western societies by making depression seem like a personal, idiopathic problem.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#20

Post by bhouston »

jackhack wrote: post #6
bhouston wrote: post #3

I think it could.... It is the "do not keep doing the same thing if it isn't working". Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc. I wonder if antidepressants in some cases encourage an individual to stick out/survive a situation they should really be escaping from?

I think you're onto it. If an organism is not successful in whatever circumstance, then it is for the benefit of the herd (and species) that the individual drop out and not propagate its genes further. It is a braking mechanism. A psychic-emotional watchdog.

I was thinking more of a temporary depression that is situational dependent.
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