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Just like cancer is caused by environmental pollutants, depression is caused by toxic social environments. You learn to be helpless. Shine light there and research funding goes bye bye.
My personal theory is that they are neither. Most mental illnesses are actually social illnesses. That is: we've engineered a society that is hostile to a set of (perfectly healthy) behavioural phenotypes.
It's already known that within different cultures and environments, those with certain "mental illnesses" fare better or worse.
Nobody with cancer "thrives" depending on their cultural environment, but if you're an engineer on the Autistic spectrum, you might. If you're an artist with ADHD, you thrive. Even schizophrenics do well in some cultural environments.
Force someone who was born bipolar, or with attention deficit in a society that demands them to sit in an office (or classroom) for 8-10 hours a day, every day, at the same time, and focus on the same thing, and sure... they will become "disordered". Just as most people would go crazy in the sort of fluid or even chaotic environment that those people would thrive in.
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A Thought Experiment:
Imagine you were born into a world where the predominant behavioural phenotype is bipolar or ADHD: there are no set work hours, only goal posts. Teams work in frenzies of 24 - 36 sleepless hours, followed by a day or two off. Maybe one week there's no work, but then for a month it's crunch time. Some days you work nights, some days you work early in the morning. Everyone wears many hats, otherwise they'd become bored; and you're expected to do the same.
To everyone, this is just the way things are. To you... your stress levels are through the roof, you can't focus in such an environment, yet everyone is wondering what's this guy's problem? Why does he have such a hard time working in a fluid environment? Why does he need special treatment and be given evenly-distributed work at predictable hours?
Clearly there's some sort of disorder going on here. So you read some pamphlets and you see a Doctor... maybe there is something wrong with you, you think. It's so natural for everyone else, yet you can barely function in society. Luckily for you, there is "help": the standard treatment for Rigid Thought Pattern Disorder is a 50mc dose of LSD every three days. Sure, it makes you not quite feel like yourself, but look at how much you've been improving since you started treatment! You no longer sleep regular hours like you used to, you're no longer displaying Rigid Thought Patterns. Just give the treatment some time and you'll get used to the side effects.
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I have no science to back this up of course. Just something I think about sometimes at 3 in the morning while I'm having a particularly productive night...
(Yes it's likely that this would be a rather inefficient world in many ways, so it makes sense for the predominant behavioural phenotype to be more predictable and stable. The point being, in both cases the non-neurotypical individual can have a positive impact if they're not regarded as deficient, but if instead we see these differences in behaviour the same way we see differences in height, strength, or any other physical attribute.)
It's possible that this is a mostly rhetorical statement by the NIMH head, but I've been disappointed the attitude I see a lot of researchers take towards depression, like it's solely the result of bad gene expression or bad brain connectivity.
It's becoming increasingly taboo to suggest that depression and other mental disorders are not diseases per se but may arise purely from the use of the mind. This in turns depends to some extent on a person's ideas and not solely (or even at all) on the presence of pathogens, tissue injuries, faulty genes, etc (though there may be medical consequences). There could be important social reasons for this taboo. Perhaps…
On the question of whether "mental illnesses" are diseases or simply arise from behaviour (as discussed in comments below). My personal theory is that they are neither. Most mental illnesses are actually social illnesses. That is: we've engineered a society that is hostile to a set of (perfectly healthy) behavioural phenotypes. It's already known that within different cultures and environments, those with certain "me…
On the question of whether "mental illnesses" are diseases or simply arise from behaviour (as discussed in comments below). My personal theory is that they are neither. Most mental illnesses are actually social illnesses. That is: we've engineered a society that is hostile to a set of (perfectly healthy) behavioural phenotypes. It's already known that within different cultures and environments, those with certain "me…
It is strange to me that you never mentioned how depression fits into your pet theory of mental illness. Can you enlighten us and explain in what type of cultural environment someone with depression thrives?
Either way, it's just something to consider based on personal observation/experience. It could be completely wrong, could be a bit of both. There's no harm in asking questions.
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edit: to you comment below. I am suggesting that the depression itself (for example, in the case of a bipolar individual -- not in the case of major depression, which is a different thing altogether), could be a symptom not of a "disease" but rather a natural reaction to living in an environment that is toxic to him or her.
In such an environment, it is perfectly natural for this individual to lose all drive, feel "worthless", and even break down mentally.
The links between chronic stress and depression are well known. Robert Sapolsky has a great lecture on the biology of depression: https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc
(tl;dw: major depression physiologically looks very little like "sadness" and a hell of a lot like chronic stress (an over-active stress response) and does indeed fit the profile of a biological disease, often caused by early trauma.
My question here is: have we built societies that are inherently traumatizing to individuals with particular behavioral phenotypes? Looking elsewhere, at societies and subcultures where these "disorders" are not as common or as debilitating to me suggests that there is at least some truth to this.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is strange to me that you never mentioned how depression fits into your pet theory of mental illness. Can you enlighten us and explain in what type of cultural environment someone with depression thrives?
Is the depression inherent to the disorder, or is it caused by the unrelenting stress brought on by living in an environment that is actively hostile to this individual? Either way, it's just something to consider based on personal observation/experience. It could be completely wrong, could be a bit of both. There's no harm in asking questions. * * * edit: to you comment below. I am suggesting that the depression its…
It's becoming increasingly taboo to suggest that depression and other mental disorders are not diseases per se but may arise purely from the use of the mind. This in turns depends to some extent on a person's ideas and not solely (or even at all) on the presence of pathogens, tissue injuries, faulty genes, etc (though there may be medical consequences). There could be important social reasons for this taboo. Perhaps…
Well, it's complicated, because although you might get depressed to issues of the mind, once that switch has been flipped in your brain, then you do have a biologically-mediated disease and you're often totally fucked without some kind of medical intervention.
It's becoming increasingly taboo to suggest that depression and other mental disorders are not diseases per se but may arise purely from the use of the mind. This in turns depends to some extent on a person's ideas and not solely (or even at all) on the presence of pathogens, tissue injuries, faulty genes, etc (though there may be medical consequences). There could be important social reasons for this taboo. Perhaps…
Plenty of people still think that about depression. It's not a helpful attitude.
But really, something being "all in your head" is terrifying if you think about it. You can never get away from something that's "all in your head".