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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

#71

Post by 1_player »

wittyreference wrote: post #68
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…

Largely because articles like this generally focus on what I think of as “layman’s depression”, or “layman’s anxiety.” That is, a mild form of the condition that straddles the gray area between “personality” and “mild personality disorder,” that diminishes quality of life in a perceptible but not devastating way. Then you go work on a psych floor and meet people whose depression is so severe it induces catatonia; peo…

How common is that extreme form of depression? Sounds like we need two different names for two very different diseases (or perhaps only one is actually a disease)

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

#72

Post by podgaj »

leto_ii wrote: post #64
podgaj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You did have a metal disorder. You were just lucky to find the cause. The cause was job stress. You could phrase it that way, but the fact remains that for me, I feel, there was an objective external cause to my unhappiness. It wasn't a spontaneous and inexplicable 'chemical imbalance in the brain'. It was a reasonable reaction to a shitty life experience. > I have a mental disorder that was harder to find the caus…

But you see, I was hospitalized several times for my mood disorder. I have come to find out that there was an objective external cause of that as well.

The problem is not with the psychiatric "cures", the problem is the psychiatrists. It took a test to LOOK at my brain chemistry form them to see what was going on with me. It took 25 years of convincing them to give me the test. THAt is the disorder.

Shitty life experiences, and almost every environmental input, will affect chemicals in our brain and body. I mean, how do you think saddness happens? It just appears out of no where? NOPE.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...

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

#73

Post by gowld »

b0rsuk wrote: post #11
frereubu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I learned during my psychology degrees that always stuck with me was that mildly depressed people are measurably better at judging probabilities of things happening. (Unfortunately I can't remember off the top of my head the structure of the study, or how much better they were). I wonder if that might fit into this, in that if you're mildly depressed presumably bad things are happening to you, so perha…

I remember reading an article like that. Also, it's a bit of a meme that if depression was 100% harmful then it would already be eliminated by evolution. I mean why shouldn't people prone to depression die off? Don't make a mistake, I'm still working on improving my life and uncovering the root causes. It is a silent thief of life.

The appendix is 100% harmful but not eliminated. As is nearsightedness.

Evolution is only affected by genotypes that prevent reproduction.

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

#74

Post by gowld »

pessimizer wrote: post #57
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?

> What is the alternative to drugs? A social safety net. A society that thinks providing the communication resources and facilities for people with common interests to socialize about those interests is as important as providing highways. > How would this help a doctor treat a mental health patient? You don't have to be a doctor to dispense pills. You can always anesthetize people who are panicking, but I'm not sure…

> facilities for people with common interests to socialize about those interests

We have that. It's even called a highway! The information superhighway.

It hasn't cured depression and anxiety, and may have worsened it.

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

#75

Post by JimTheMan »

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 think people just need to realise that depression is going to come from when the stressors in our environment overwhelm our ability to cope. It's not just something that arises from out of nowhere for most people. For instance I bet a great swathe of the unemployed would not be depressed if they had a job.

Sounds like you were able to adapt and start doing things that would reduce your stressors.

However I don't think its a 100% correct to equate therapy with medication. If you visited a clinical psychologist they would have probably worked on increasing your awareness of stressors, thoughts and how to increase your ability to cope with them.

Edit: And I just realised you may not have actually had a disorder of any type. A psychologist would have been able to assess you and see if you were just in an acute situation or not.

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

#76

Post by typicalset »

podgaj wrote: post #63
slfnflctd wrote: post #52

At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed. I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When it starts to flare up, like with some kind of physical pain, that's telling me I need to pay attention and change things up a bit. Furthermore - and perhaps m…

Do you realize these two sentences say the same exact thing? You have a pain, which is a signal of a disorder, and you need to change something to fix it. "At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed." "I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When…

I think these two sentences are different: it's analogous to treating a symptom vs treating an underlying condition.

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

#77

Post by Solstinox »

podgaj wrote: post #63
slfnflctd wrote: post #52

At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed. I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When it starts to flare up, like with some kind of physical pain, that's telling me I need to pay attention and change things up a bit. Furthermore - and perhaps m…

Do you realize these two sentences say the same exact thing? You have a pain, which is a signal of a disorder, and you need to change something to fix it. "At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed." "I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When…

No. One sees the depression as something to be fixed, the other sees the underlying problem causing the depression as something to be fixed.

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

#78

Post by DanBC »

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'm most surprised to learn that this _isn't_ the current prevailing view in the medical profession.

In the UK I speak to very many mental health care professionals, and I've only ever met one who pushed the biological model above the bio-psycho-social model. Everyone else is keenly aware of the wider determinants of mental health.

There's some attempt to build this into the system, but it's pretty difficult because of the way the NHS and Public Health are set up at the moment. There's a lot of regional variation.

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

#79

Post by SzamarCsacsi »

"When it comes to what labels we use, a change is welcome. Mental health recovery in part depends on whether patients believe they can get better. Telling our patients that their symptoms may be tied to a healthy response to adversity could be very encouraging."

I find it the exact opposite. For me it seems easier to fix a mental disorder in my brain than to bring the necessary sociocultural changes in the world to mitigate my problems.

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

#80

Post by podgaj »

typicalset wrote: post #76
podgaj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize these two sentences say the same exact thing? You have a pain, which is a signal of a disorder, and you need to change something to fix it. "At first I viewed the depression I started fighting in my teens as a scourge, a defect, something broken to be fixed." "I have since come to see it as an important signal. When I am managing my life and mental states well, it often fades into the background. When…

I think these two sentences are different: it's analogous to treating a symptom vs treating an underlying condition.

Yeah, I agree with that distinction. This is am important semantic discussion.

But he just changed the name of the thing he wants to get rid of from "pain" to "signal". The signal is still a disorder. The signal is the thing that bothers us.

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