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Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

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Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#211

Post by kerkeslager »

avindroth wrote: post #200
kerkeslager wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus dude, I'm really not sure whose post you're responding to, because you didn't address anything I said in my post. > The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree wi…

You are taking this way more personally than you should be. You should probably check yourself and see if you aren’t being an asshole to other people with your supposed “intelligence”. Ad hominem aside, is it so hard to understand the words “implicit” and “explicit”? They are English words, and implicit vs. explicit goals really isn’t all that hard to understand. Maybe people around you don’t use this language, but i…

> They are English words, and implicit vs. explicit goals really isn’t all that hard to understand.

The problem isn't that they are hard to understand, the problem is that they have nothing to do with what anyone was talking about. When someone says, "Persevering in goals can alleviate negative feelings", saying "Explicit goals can distract from implicit goals" isn't a response, it's a non-sequitur.

> Being skeptical and negative and doubtful isn’t a hallmark of intelligence, mind you.

Being skeptical and doubtful are definitely hallmarks of intelligence. The alternative to skepticism is blind faith. The alternative to doubt is unjustified confidence.

In the rest of your post you've decided to attack me personally, to which my only response is going to be: you're accusing me of ad hominem attacks?

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#212

Post by JamesBarney »

gfodor wrote: post #190
podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

I empathize with your frustration, but you're letting your personal experience override logic. You've made a simple logical error: a study claiming that people who have goals can fend off depression does not imply that those with depression have it because they do not have goals. It means that some people who don't have goals, but do have depression, may remedy it by getting goals. But not everyone. If the research a…

> It means that some people who don't have goals, but do have depression, may remedy it by getting goals. But not everyone.

It really doesn't show this at all, you are misreading the study because the author of the article misrepresents it. Very few correlation studies turn into causation studies. Even when we have entire subfields dedicated to it. See amyloid beta.

Other possibilities "goals are protective against anxiety and depression but not changeable" "other factors increase goal driven behavior and protect against anxiety and depression" "goal driven behavior is protective but not curative of anxiety and depression" "goal driven behavior increases likelihood that individual gets treated for anxiety or depression"

Any of which would mean that increasing goal driven behavior would not help with anxiety or depression.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#213

Post by anbende »

mirimir wrote: post #76
JamesBarney wrote: post #71

“Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make people feel like their lives have meaning. On the other hand, disengaging from striving toward those aims or having a cynical attitude can have high mental health costs.” No they don't. Your findings suggest that pe…

Yes, correlation causality.

In general, you're right of course.

The article in question used a lagged design, using temporally prior markers to predict later change. This is not fully causal, but it's not fully correlative either. In the field, it's consider to provide preliminary causal evidence. Still needs additional research to be sure.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#214

Post by pm90 »

Matumio wrote: post #107
pm90 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want. Well, what might those problems be? What goals do we “really” want? For most of humanity, the majority of humans have had little options to change…

Our brains have evolved mainly for cultural knowledge accumulation over generations. We must learn any specific hunting/gathering skills from role models while growing up. We even learn from others what goals are worth achieving. We are right now learning from each other how to think about our goals and problems. This is not the first time humans have the choice of picking their goals. Even on an evolutionary scale w…

Thousands of years is a really small time in the evolutionary history of modern humans.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#216

Post by stronglikedan »

podgaj wrote: post #152

I do not know how many people here have "Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders" but I am on disability for all three and it runs in my family on my mother's side. So what is this article saying? Me and my family just do not have perseverance? That we lack the "will" not to be depressed and anxious? That I just need to "Aspir[e] toward personal and career goals"? HA! No, it's not true. You see, they found we all have a…

> some medications that a psychiatrist could not give me

Curious, were these medications for the symptoms you mentioned in general (Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders), or specific to the genetic disorder that caused those symptoms?

(I assume the latter, but I hate to assume.)

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#217

Post by burntoutfire »

kerkeslager wrote: post #156
burntoutfire wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In his essay, Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls, Scott Alexander notes that any intellectual movement that has been around for a while has made some mistakes, and is probably aware of them, so if there's some obvious failure of a movement, the people who still believe in the movement probably have learned from that failure. Communists are aware of Stalin murdering people and are wary of totalitarianism. I'm not so su…

> So far, we've had dozens of implementations of communism all over the world and 100% of them ended up being authoritarian (i.e. if you disagree with the ruling party, you go to jail) or straight up murderous. sigh You read a post saying that "but look at these skulls!"-type arguments are naive and arrogant, and your response is a "but look at these skulls!"-type argument? Really? Which of these[1] pacifist[2] commu…

All of these examples are not societies implementing communism, but just merely small groups of people who do so, in a safe bubble provided by a non-communist society (US or Israel) which surrounds them. They benefit immensely from the wealth and protection coming from the surrounding non-communist society. These conditions do not translate in any way to larger scale implementation and it's not what majority of people mean when they discuss communism. I'd like to see one example of communist society of let's say even just 1 million people that is not a colossal failure.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#218

Post by podgaj »

saas_sam wrote: post #203
podgaj wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point. This study tells us nothing. The problem is not with people or the doctors, it is with these idiotic studies. From the study: "People who showed more goal persistence and optimism during the first assessment in the mid-1990s had greater reductions in depression, anxiety and panic disorders across the 18 years, according to the authors. And throughout those years, people who began with fewer mental…

What do you think is more reasonable, that your emotional commitments to this subject are distorting your read of the article, or that the American Psychological Association knows less than you do?

Appeal to authority much?

I just told you they were wrong about me during my 30 years of treatment. They thought I had a mood disorder but I had a metabolic disorder. so in this case, yes, they knew less than I did.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#219

Post by podgaj »

anbende wrote: post #208
hrktb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the article is not far from parent's reading. For instance these quotes: > We wanted to understand what specific coping strategies would be helpful in reducing rates of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. > Our findings suggest that people can improve their mental health by raising or maintaining high levels of tenacity, resilience and optimism,” she said. “Aspiring toward personal and career goals can make…

The second quote does not imply that all depressed people are such because they are lacking perseverance. There are several issues with this interpretation. The first is that because something is on average true does not mean it is always true. There are cases where perseverance does not help depression. There are many where it does. On average it helps, which is the claim. Next, it it is not fair to presume that bec…

> This study outlines some things that are typically helpful. It does not say that they will be helpful or possible for everyone.

Agreed, but what do you do if it does not help them. THAT is the problem.

Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders

#220

Post by derefr »

raxxorrax wrote: post #84
derefr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason ...no? In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia. (Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's so…

I don't think it is even closely true that mental problems like this are sorely caused by genetic mutations. There is a careful chemical balance in your brain and it can get out of order by food, drugs, trauma and probably a lot of other factors unknown to us. Our lifestyle isn't very natural, we have long left natural selection behind for that matter.

> There is a careful chemical balance in your brain

Homeostasis processes, and redundant gene-coding sites in our DNA, mean that your body is mostly robust to environmental onslaughts. Animals have evolved in a competitive environment where these problems already existed: parasites want to control your brain; predators want to envenomate you before they eat you; prey species want to stop you in your tracks with toxins. But life evolves to adapt to these problems, becoming able to shrug most of them off if it's a consistent part of their niche. Most of the "spices" we eat are plant toxins we've adapted to be fine consuming.

When mutations happen, they don't always immediately cause a problem. What they more-often do, is to cause the body (or in this case, the brain) to lose some of its homeostatic mechanisms — to become less robust to these environmental onslaughts. The affected system becomes more vulnerable, or loses compensatory capacity — it remains able to function in the normal case, but loses the ability to function in the edge case.

Of course, some of our body processes are more robust/protected than others. Some systems (reward; inflammation; sleep) are very easy to "hack", for some reason; while others (libido; fear) are nearly impossible.

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