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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

#191

Post by podgaj »

gowld wrote: post #73
b0rsuk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uhm, no.

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/35/12/2957/5112969

"the strongest signals of recent human adaptation in Europe did not coincide with the Neolithic transition but with more recent changes in environment, diet, or efficiency of selection due to increases in effective population size."

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

#192

Post by ColanR »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #173
ColanR wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spreading such misinformation can lead to people not seeking treatment and getting hurt. Misinformation? Unless you have expert knowledge in that domain - and unless the alternatives podgaj describes have been exhaustively eliminated by a body of peer-reviewed research - you have absolutely no justification to label that as misinformation.

> and unless the alternatives podgaj describes have been exhaustively eliminated by a body of peer-reviewed research - you have absolutely no justification to label that as misinformation. That's not how that should work. If I say that my farts cure cancer, it's not the job of peer-review research to disprove me, and until then we all just assume that the information I'm giving is good.

> until then we all just assume that the information I'm giving is good.

Fallacy of the excluded middle. There's other alternatives to a) saying it's outright false and b) saying it's outright true. I'm saying it shouldn't be labeled "misinformation" without extensive evidence to back it up, just as you're saying it shouldn't be labeled "truth" without the same level of evidence.

Instead, it's actually possible that we could discuss the theory as if it might be true, or false, until there's sufficient evidence to rule out one or the other. It's Pelic4n's refusal to do this that I take issue with.

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

#193

Post by cbanek »

jiggybling wrote: post #180
golergka wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about something that isn't really in the present Or is it? Therapy, especially gestalt or existential, often makes people realise that something really is off with their outlook on life, relationships with other people or other things like this — something that they had paid no attention to and perceived as "normal", that really wasn't. And in the end, what started as their fight against depression ended up as work…

Can you give an example, personal or otherwise?

Not the OP, but I'm in therapy personally, and just as a personal example, didn't realize that some current reactions and feelings were colored by past experiences. In particular, this has to do with patterns I hadn't noticed across different relationships and work. Like my pathological independence and general lack of trust in humanity.

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

#194

Post by _ywdj »

vanderZwan wrote: post #167
_ywdj wrote: post #158

Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like others have described, when I started experiencing symptoms of conditions resembling anxiety, depression, ADHD, mild bipolar, paranoia and CFS/ME, I initially sought mainstream medical psychiatric treatment and undertook talk therapy and was prescribed anti-anxiety…

While I'm very happy that this worked out for you, and I'm also sure that your scenario will apply to others, maybe even many people, even then I have to add a word of caution: generalizing from the experiences of one person to all psychological conditions would be a scientifically unsound position to take (I know that this not what you are saying, but it is possible to walk away with that conclusion). For example, m…

Sure, thanks, but remember we're adults here, and pretty well educated ones at that, so, the need for caution and discernment can be presumed to be understood by readers on this site :)

For what it's worth, plenty of books have been written about these concepts over several decades; some authors include Gabor Maté, Bruce Lipton, Stanislav and Christina Grof, Peter Levine and Iain McGilchrist, all of whom have advanced academic credentials in psychiatry or biomedical science.

So, yeah, there's no "generalizing from the experiences of one person to all psychological conditions"; there's sharing one anecdote as an example of what many experts have known for years (even if those experts' research findings aren't used much in formulating the DSM or applied by your average neighborhood psychiatrist, for reasons that are a whole other discussion!).

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

#195

Post by podgaj »

least wrote: post #169
zepto wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The viewpoint that bipolar (and other brain differences) is a difference rather than a disorder can enable a person to have self compassion, and find peace and self acceptance, even though the condition will continue to affect them. The idea that it’s a disorder and can be treated as such is a reasonable hypothesis for medical science to pursue, but that is all it is. Outside of that it’s just a source of stigma and…

The viewpoint is based in the reality we live in where we stigmatize abnormality. The correct response isn't to try and normalize abnormality, but to try and remove the stigma surrounding it. Suggesting that it is normal actually creates a stigma for those who are suffering from it from pursuing treatment because they're supposed to feel that way because it's "normal."

In no way do I think my symptoms are normal and just different. What I am saying is that what causes my symptoms is a different response to a similar environmental input that most people do not react to, ie, diet.

I want you to consider it being like an allergy, not that I have some sort of histmagenic response, just that when you take my trigger away I have no symptoms.

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

#196

Post by _ywdj »

RankingMember wrote: post #166
_ywdj wrote: post #158

Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like others have described, when I started experiencing symptoms of conditions resembling anxiety, depression, ADHD, mild bipolar, paranoia and CFS/ME, I initially sought mainstream medical psychiatric treatment and undertook talk therapy and was prescribed anti-anxiety…

Can you give us an example of one of the techniques you used?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365937

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

#197

Post by Ancapistani »

astrocat wrote: post #170
_ywdj wrote: post #158

Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like others have described, when I started experiencing symptoms of conditions resembling anxiety, depression, ADHD, mild bipolar, paranoia and CFS/ME, I initially sought mainstream medical psychiatric treatment and undertook talk therapy and was prescribed anti-anxiety…

The Trauma of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller is probably a good read to throw in here if this is the direction you're looking to explore - especially if you can get an early edition that hasn't been watered down. Some of her perspectives into experiences as a child that are commonly accepted as "normal" but are often experienced by the child as trauma and grow into dysfunction as adults were interesting.

Is it "Trauma" or "Drama"? The version I'm seeing on Amazon is "The Drama of the Gifted Child".

ETA: I found this interesting, too - the author's own child wrote a book about his negative childhood experiences: https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium-mother-dearest-1...

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

#198

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ColanR wrote: post #192
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and unless the alternatives podgaj describes have been exhaustively eliminated by a body of peer-reviewed research - you have absolutely no justification to label that as misinformation. That's not how that should work. If I say that my farts cure cancer, it's not the job of peer-review research to disprove me, and until then we all just assume that the information I'm giving is good.

> until then we all just assume that the information I'm giving is good. Fallacy of the excluded middle. There's other alternatives to a) saying it's outright false and b) saying it's outright true. I'm saying it shouldn't be labeled "misinformation" without extensive evidence to back it up, just as you're saying it shouldn't be labeled "truth" without the same level of evidence. Instead, it's actually possible that…

Ok, so misinformation may be too strong a word - really it's just unfounded, so that labeling IS wrong. I still think we need to treat it as false until we have evidence it works. I'm sure you wouldn't treat my farts as curing cancer if I made the claim unless there was proof.

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

#199

Post by carabiner »

The money quote:

> Study author Kristen Syme, a recent WSU Ph.D. graduate, compares treating anxiety, depression, or PTSD with antidepressants to medicating someone for a broken bone without setting the bone itself. She believes that these problems “look more like sociocultural phenomena, so the solution is not necessarily fixing a dysfunction in the person's brain but fixing dysfunctions in the social world."

This is EXACTLY what Kaczynski said:

> The concept of 'mental health' in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress ... Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.

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

#200

Post by vorpalhex »

carabiner wrote: post #199

The money quote: > Study author Kristen Syme, a recent WSU Ph.D. graduate, compares treating anxiety, depression, or PTSD with antidepressants to medicating someone for a broken bone without setting the bone itself. She believes that these problems “look more like sociocultural phenomena, so the solution is not necessarily fixing a dysfunction in the person's brain but fixing dysfunctions in the social world ." This…

Kaczynski ends up positing a kind of return to the natural state as the ultimate solution (which he basis his actions on). The issue being that historically, these problems existed in earlier times even if not discussed in detail. Kaczynski blames "the state of the world" without ever listing some state where the problem didn't exist.

> “Research on depression, anxiety, and PTSD, should put greater emphasis on mitigating conflict and adversity and less on manipulating brain chemistry.”

Whereas Kaczynski blames society, the world at large, the paper sets these up as smaller addressable issues. You can identify "kid B needs extra recess" more readily than abolish schools as Kaczynski calls for.

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