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Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

psychologytoday.com

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Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#41

Post by npwr »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #27

This strikes me as a pretty clumsy article. > What if mental disorders like anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder aren’t mental disorders at all? Of course they're disorders. That's why they deserve treatment. This bears no connection to the question of whether they're adaptive. Our capacity for physical pain is adaptive, but doctors still treat pain. > With a thorough review of the evidence, they sh…

> Besides clueless commentators on the Internet, who is suggesting depression is simply a matter of 'chemical imbalance'? If that were the case, it wouldn't be brought on by loneliness, and it wouldn't be treated with CBT and talking therapy.

Most of (all?) chemical depression treatments are based on the serotoninergic depression hypothesis that has never been verified. In the recent years more and more arguments come directly against this hypothesis. Yet SSRIs are still the first line of treatment for depressive patients.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Path...

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

leto_ii wrote: post #16

Here's a personal anecdote of the moment when I realized that perhaps mental disorders are not disorders at all: A few years ago I had a job that made me deeply unhappy. The unhappiness came about gradually, but in my last year there it was overwhelming. In my last year on the job I spent a good chunk of my working hours holding back feelings of deep frustration and anger over how things were progressing and over how…

I've had something similar, not depression or whatever, just not feeling in the right place at work. I was offered an (external) career coach to help with it, also because I didn't really want to quit because it was a fairly cushy job with high potential to be challenging. But it hadn't been challenging or gratifying for two+ years at that point.

The tldr with the career coach was to do more about it myself (very generic I know), eventually last year I looked for jobs critically and found one that ticked a lot of boxes. I'm pretty content right now.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#43

Post by johnchristopher »

framecowbird wrote: post #4

I'm most surprised to learn that this _isn't_ the current prevailing view in the medical profession. I am not a doctor, but it's always seemed more natural to me to view depression and anxiety as adaptive behaviours - albeit perhaps ones that can end up being triggered too far. I read an article once (wish I could find it) that one advantage of mild depression was as sort a "call for help and support" from other embe…

> I read an article once (wish I could find it) that one advantage of mild depression was as sort a "call for help and support" from other embers of a close-knit social group, although I'm not sure how well-founded the claim was.

In the same vein I also read something about how depression helps in momentarily retiring from the group to be perceived as a non-threat and the rumination is the symptom of a brain dedicating resources to finding solutions to a problem. Pop psychology most likely I suppose.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#44

Post by podgaj »

As someone on disability with a mood disorder I can say without reservation that that article was mostly horrible.

I will agree with them that there is a mismatch, but the mismatch is between each individuals genetics and environment. so they are still disorders, it is just that they have not found the right treatment.

And as someone who has been hospitalized several times it is amazing to me how little testing they do for people with serious mental illnesses. It was not until after I had to learn genetics and neurobiology that I forced them to give me a simple serum amino acid test that showed something atypical was going on. Turned out I have a BH4 (tetrahydrobiopterin) deficiency that limits the amount of serotonin and dopamine I make. BH4 deficiency has already been show to be a cause for anxiety and depression.

So Mood Disorders are all environmental illnesses. I am off of all my medications and I control my mental health by diet and environmental changes. But some neurological damage has been done that I might have to live with. So you youngins heed my advice, if something feels bad, don't do it.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#45

Post by InfiniteRand »

nerdponx wrote: post #33
raducu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this actually IS the prevailing view, but it is not really actionable. What is the alternative to drugs? A real advantage of depression is you won't challenge authority so you'll be more likely to appease the Alpha members of the group. So what? How would this help a doctor treat a mental health patient?

A combination of targeted therapy and short courses of drugs designed to ease the therapy process and control symptoms in the short term?

In my experience most psychiatrists recommend some form of talk therapy in addition to medication and my impression is that the consensus view is medications + therapy are more effective than either by themselves (also recommended are exercising , sleeping well, and other general health stuff most doctors lecture their patients about)

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#46

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

nerdponx wrote: post #33
raducu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this actually IS the prevailing view, but it is not really actionable. What is the alternative to drugs? A real advantage of depression is you won't challenge authority so you'll be more likely to appease the Alpha members of the group. So what? How would this help a doctor treat a mental health patient?

A combination of targeted therapy and short courses of drugs designed to ease the therapy process and control symptoms in the short term?

What you you suggest doctors do when short term treatment regimens become decades long?

If only the symptoms are treated it is illogical to expect the condition to go away. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#47

Post by podgaj »

leto_ii wrote: post #16

Here's a personal anecdote of the moment when I realized that perhaps mental disorders are not disorders at all: A few years ago I had a job that made me deeply unhappy. The unhappiness came about gradually, but in my last year there it was overwhelming. In my last year on the job I spent a good chunk of my working hours holding back feelings of deep frustration and anger over how things were progressing and over how…

This is like saying people with heart disease do not have a disease because they stopped eating poorly and the heart disease went away.

You did have a metal disorder. You were just lucky to find the cause. The cause was job stress.

I have a mental disorder that was harder to find the cause. But I did as well.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#48

Post by podgaj »

usgroup wrote: post #9
heisenbit wrote: post #3

Insights from psychology today from an article originally in Forbes. About the Author: A pediatrician and writer, Dr. Escalante is on a mission...

+1 but let’s see where your comment ends up ranked in the thread at days’ end.

+2

"Dr. Escalante understands because she is a recovering worried mother herself. "

I am tired of people prescribing their cure to everyone else in the world. Great, it worked for her. And I get it, the whole world is neurotic, but to say it is not a disorder is idiotic.

If I make a mess of my room, it is just disordered. It is just that simple.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#49

Post by blame_lewis »

mamon wrote: post #35
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is whether it's adaptive , i.e. whether it has evolved because it is beneficial (such as our pain aversion), rather than arising as an unfortunate bug in the system (such as cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder which seems pretty clearly not to be adaptive).

Of course PTSD is beneficial: it gets you discharged from military, for example, so the chances of you being in the situation where someone is shooting bazooka at you drop to zero. In general PTSD helps you avoid traumatic experience in future.

In many interpersonal relationships, a trauma response causes you to become more liable to ending up in the same situation, not less. Do not underestimate how many people end up reliving their trauma over and over because they can't overcome that response.

Re: Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study

#50

Post by vanderZwan »

> If ADHD is not a disorder, but a mismatch with a human environment, then suddenly it’s not a medical issue. It’s an issue for educational reform. And that is a compelling thought, given the evidence that kids’ focus and cognition are improved by physical activity. Still, we need to take this study with a grain of salt. There is a large body of research showing other biological factors when it comes to ADHD. For instance, there is evidence that premature birth increases rates of ADHD later.

So speaking as someone with adult ADHD who is getting by without medication with the right lifestyle choices, this sounds a bit like arguing that cardiovascular diseases are not medical issues, they're lifestyle problems.

I mean, yeah, in both cases the problems very much are largely caused by our lifestyles. But these lifestyles still affects me differently than how it affects most other people. Don't get me wrong, I'd be very happy if we get rid of the disorder label, not to mention societal stigmas surrounding mental illnesses and/or being neuro-atypical in general, but I don't see why we'd have to choose between (in this example) educational reform and psychiatric therapy when both seem valid options that complement each other.

EDIT: also, if you really want a good example of dystopian victim blaming in psychology, I'd suggest checking out "opppositional defiant disorder" and imagining how that label can be abused

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

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