Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases

Dis-ease. Semantics. There can be morphological (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785515/) and biochemical indicators of depression and anxiety.

To make mice depressed they will do a forced swimming test (poor mice). So this is another way to induce depression: physical+psychological stress.

If there were good science with good funding it's feasible to come up with a lab test for depression--and anxiety--that's very, very accurate.

No, the article is incorrect. It does not have citations either. Explore pubmed for plenty of information. (Keep in mind the sad reality is that even good science is wrong lots of the time--I'm hedging, okay most of the time.)

The risks of not properly treating depression and anxiety is very, very high. So the article is very irresponsible in my opinion.

Oh, this is a fantastic and beautiful deconstruction of this argument, I LOVE this. The comparison to chronic pain is fantastic, because indeed, chronic pain is a side effect of many conditions, and if we were able to relieve the chronic pain somehow, we certainly would, but being currently unable, we seek means to treat the chronic pain.

I've often held that the most insidious part about clinical depression is its self-reinforcing nature. Deep clinical depression is throwing a person into a deep hole with thorns sticking out of the sides- every attempt to climb out of said hole results in swollen cuts and pain to the arms and body, rendering eventual escape more difficult with each struggle.

Eventually, it becomes like trying to climb out of said hole with no arms at all. It's one of my life goals to discover biochemical methods to help such people regain the use of their arms, or even essentially grow new ones.

I find articles like this one useful ONLY* insofar as they assist those who have gained use of their arms and cut away the brambles on the walls of the pit- for most others, it merely ends up encouraging more struggling, self-recriminations, and effectually a deepening of the hole. :(

>There can be morphological (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785515/) and biochemical indicators of depression and anxiety.

That doesn't really have any bearing on the accuracy of the article. PTSD is also associated with reduced hippocampal volume, which reverses with successful treatment. It isn't as if the hippocampus suddenly shrinks for no apparent reason...

>So this is another way to induce depression: physical+psychological stress.

The article is talking about psychological stress, so you're really just discussing the same underlying cause.

>No, the article is incorrect. It does not have citations either. Explore pubmed for plenty of information.

I don't see how it is incorrect. It is just discussing the problem at a systems level rather than a biochemical level. Both explanations can be correct.

>The risks of not properly treating depression and anxiety is very, very high. So the article is very irresponsible in my opinion.

On the contrary, I think it's very irresponsible to dismiss articles like this out of hand, as that will likely prevent people from seeking the correct treatment.

Medication is essentially victim blaming by society unto the individual reacting against its conditions. And the medical health specialists are agents of society, not the person they're ostensibly helping.

Naw, I understood the Chief.

I followed your link to that paper -- sure, CBT, once unwind the acronym, sounds fine. That's what I thought would work on the patient in my family (by marriage, not by birth). But CBT didn't work. Not even a little, not a chance. And the patient was just awash in cognitive ability -- brilliant, actually. Or, maybe the brilliance caused seeing more threats and, thus, more anxiety.

The usual suspects, say, SSRIs, etc. didn't work, either. The result was, right, the worst possible, and of course there are hints that SSRIs can contribute to that result.

Much of the problem was social phobia, e.g., as in the link. Well, it was strongly in common to the mother and all three daughters. So, nature or nurture? If just nurture, maybe CBT, etc. should have worked. But, gotta tell you, at least on the social phobia part, nothing made a dent. All three of the daughters had at least talk therapy, and, no help at all. None.

If CBT can work, as in the link, fine, no, terrific. But, for anyone facing the problems mentioned in the link, need to keep in mind that for a specific case the averages don't have to matter and have to entertain that maybe CBT won't work.

Just why the Chief was so down on talk therapy, or CBT if that is close enough, I don't know. But, we're talking 20+ years ago.

It can be serious stuff, and darned tough to deal with.

Or, the Chief's summary remark went: "Get the patient all calmed down, stable, happy, and then suddenly there will some little event, say, a new file folder of work, and the patient will be all stressed out again."

Or, in my intuition, provide something like a padded cell life for the patient, and things could look fine. But, try to have the patient address the real world, and just some random, new event, say, where there might be some risk that they would have to think through and handle, and they could get all "stressed out" again -- sleepless nights, GI problems, tears, depression, clinical depression, etc.

I'm no expert, but, again, overall IMHO the OP is a bit simplistic.