Sometimes people are reluctant to disclose the reason for their depression because it is embarrassing or sensitive, they find it painful, they believe they must soldier on and ignore them, or they have difficulty putting their complex internal struggles into words.
But depression is nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression. (There are several effective therapies that focus on just this.) It is also essential, in instances where there is resistance to discussing ruminations, that the therapist try to identify and dismantle those barriers.
When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.
Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters co-editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe, where he edits the Sunday Ideas section.
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Add CommentPerhaps researchers are reversing cause and effect. What if strong analytical thinkers are the ones who succomb to depression more often? Perhaps depression is what happens when an analytical mind has too much, or too little, to work on and it the use of those brain functions breaks down. In my case, I was not ever aware of being depressed when I had my brain fully engaged in the analytical tasks I am good at. But then I got into a severe overload situation which led directly to depression. My brain eventually stopped being able to manage the stress (rather like an arcade game when the same thing happens in each skill level, but at faster and faster speeds as you progress to your own fail point). Now some years later I have too little to do, and I find it hard to kick the mental routines of depression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSlevitt, you might have a point there but I think the researches indicated their subjects showed better analytical skills when depressed (it is not clearly stated but I am assuming the same subjects showed less analytical skills when not depressed). Either case the best way to treat a highly-analytical depressed mind (e.g. Marvin, the Paranoid Android) is manual labor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSlevitt, you might have a point there but I think the researches indicated their subjects showed better analytical skills when depressed (it is not clearly stated but I am assuming the same subjects showed less analytical skills when not depressed). Either case the best way to treat a highly-analytical depressed mind (e.g. Marvin, the Paranoid Android) is manual labor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey are not reversing cause and effect. The article suggests that because depression is part of the brain's evolved ability to solve problems, critical thinkers will tend to be depressed more often when they encounter difficulties in their "work," whether it be professional, personal or social work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSlevitt: They are not reversing cause and effect. The article suggests that because depression is part of the brain's evolved ability to solve problems, critical thinkers will tend to be depressed more often when they encounter difficulties in their "work," whether it be professional, personal or social work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's an interesting perspective and a relief to read how depression is an adaptive part of us, but it's missing any explanation of anxiety in the depressive disorder. It seems that anxiety and the sense of being overwhelmed are also experienced by depressed patients. How would those fit into this model? Is it possible that the first symptom of depression is anxiety and being overwhelmed? In the model presented by the article, anxiety could be the result of the individual meeting a problem that cannot be resolved. As a result of being anxious and overwhelmed, the brain then steps in and starts shutting down extraneous systems to lower the level of general anxiety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisslevitt:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may be right. I seem to have had a similar working experience. I read the article as saying that depression brings focus, and solving the problem relieves the depression, which I find rewarding. Overload prevents reaching a solution and the prolonged depression becomes a reinforcing problem.
Inactivity prompts me to find things to do, just for the mental engagement and often regardless of whether are intrinsically worthwhile. I find them absorbing, my wife thinks they are time wasters.
As I write this, I am struck that my behavior is similar to skinners rats, or those long distance runners grinding themselves to dust for the high it brings them. They all smell of being addictive, and in-extremis, unhealthy and destructive.
I think the writer was a little mixed up in his definition of "rumination." When I was working on abstract mathematical problems, I'd just get mad at them, chew on them for a while, then get away from them. They would then ruminate in my subconscious mind, which would do some synthesis (the reverse to analysis -- in metabolism, the words are catabolism and anabolism) and produce a reasonable proof for the theorem I was working on. When it emerged, in a process called the "Aha! Phenomenon," the anger would have been reversed to a sense of elation. When I was working on a more difficult problem ("Why can't people talk?"), the original feelings weren't pure, simple anger and some horrible feelings came back with the solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the author of the above piece describes as "ruminating" I would call "chewing the cud." Unfortunately, many people do it with their mouths open and you get to hear the incomplete thoughts swirling.
The author assumes that the cause of the depressive state is clear and obvious to the person. But in my case, I have no idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd if the need to analyze a large social problem is the cause of a extended periods of depression, why doesn't this rumination ever solve it for so many of us.
I find, that I am similar to Lt.Kije, when I am in "the hole" of depression, I tend to absorb myself in useless mindful tasks - puzzles, drawing, reading science articles.... So no doubt I am am more analytical. But I don't think it's a healthy strategy.
These are ways to avoid any useful ruminations. And writing about my issues? I still don't know what the h#** they are.
Moving alleviates my depression. Sitting still makes it worse.
Of course making me move is whole separate issue.
But aren't those "incomplete thoughts swirling when people open their mouth" that you mention helpful to the group by stimulating new thoughts and perspectives that otherwise would go unearthed? If were to completely develop our theories and proofs before discussing a topic, it would be a very quiet world, and perhaps less advanced. Like you, I was also uncertain on the author's use of the word 'rumination', but then I went to the author's website and read his definition, which is very specific and detailed. As I'm not a scientist, I don't truly understand it. But it's very interesting. The point you bring up about a negative emotion becoming a positive emotion when the problem is resolved is interesting and relevant too. I think he discusses that in his Thesis, "The Bright Side of Being Blue".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems pretty doubtful that anyone could identify an adaptive advantage to depression. It just seems much more likely (Ocham's Razor) that depression is an exaggerated or mal-functioning version of something else that is adaptive. Maybe we would do better to identify how treatable depression differs from intractible depression. Perhaps that would be more useful for people who are experiencing one or the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've known four people that have suffered from debilitating depression for long periods of time. Three of them are highly analytical. In fact, two of them are chess players. However, I don't think an analytical mind should be a source of depression. Just as a person can wallow in faults, a person can ruminate in happiness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe one solution that has cured depression for 3 out of the 4 depressed people I know is VIGOROUS exercise. The fourth depressed person I know is too attached to her melancholy and isn't willing to exercise.
This article is dangerously narrow minded. I can assure you there is no advantage to have from being clinically depressed. The anxiety is overwhelming and the condition can lead to suicide. When you feel normal (or even manic in bi-polar disorder) you are much more capable of thinking through a problem. The idea is attractive - that there's an evolutionary advantage to getting depressed - but it's just too debilitating and destructive. Mild malaise maybe productive in that you clear the decks to focus on one issue, but full-scale depression is most definitely not. Also the article implies that depression is always triggered by external stimuli or internal thoughts or problems, which is simply not the case - it often arises as a result of a chemical imbalance or brain illness. In the case of bi-polar, manic moods can indeed be extremely productive. It could be possible that the following depression gives the body and brain a chance to recoup. But that still doesn't give a case for general depression to have any evolutionary advantage. In addition, general experience says that problems are best solved by thinking clearly about them, discussing them and looking at them in different ways, (and taking a break to eat or have sex might even help!) - things a seriously depressed person are absolutely incapable of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems that depressions tends to cause a person to be more risk averse. A depressed person seems to reflect on their past failures and attempts to avoid situations where failure is likely to occur again, whereas in a non depressed state a person tends to be more experimental and prone creative expression. Mania being the most extreme example of this. Perhaps some of the evolutionary value of depression is to help evolve caution. Those who are more cause will, often be more likely to survive, where those more inclined to take risks will be more likely to die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is dangerously narrow minded. I can assure you there is no advantage to have from being clinically depressed. The anxiety is overwhelming and the condition can lead to suicide. When you feel normal (or even manic in bi-polar disorder) you are much more capable of thinking through a problem. The idea is attractive - that there's an evolutionary advantage to getting depressed - but it's just too debilitating and destructive. Mild malaise maybe productive in that you clear the decks to focus on one issue, but full-scale depression is most definitely not. Also the article implies that depression is always triggered by external stimuli or internal thoughts or problems, which is simply not the case - it often arises as a result of a chemical imbalance or brain illness. In the case of bi-polar, manic moods can indeed be extremely productive. It could be possible that the following depression gives the body and brain a chance to recoup. But that still doesn't give a case for general depression to have any evolutionary advantage. In addition, general experience says that problems are best solved by thinking clearly about them, discussing them and looking at them in different ways, (and taking a break to eat or have sex might even help!) - things a seriously depressed person are absolutely incapable of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhy the confusion over 'rumination'? : 'chewing the cud', trying to 'digest a problem'...all the same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBenny Andersson of Abba once said that being depressed was a very Swedish emotion and he took pride in it as a source of inspiration. How many great songs were the result of a breakup in the writer's life? Sometimes life just sucks and we should have the right to be depressed about it and not be ashamed for being depressed. It's only in modern times that people are expected to SMILE for the camera...look in pictures over 100 years old and tell me how many smiles you can find.
Only in modern society are people given this expectation of being HAPPY HAPPY all the time, and if not, then you can expect a divorce...if the drugs don't make you artificially happy.
In India, it's considered rude to force someone into conversation...if you're in a group and someone is keeping silent, room is given them to 'ruminate' in peace. Here in the USA, you're expected to yammer away.
I found this article extremely interesting but must admit that experience (my own - that is all I can speak to) is very far removed from the scientists' hypotheses. Yes one ruminates, but the thoughts are FAR from logical and analytical; they are unrelated to anything that is happening in real life. I believe that what the scientists define here as depression is not related to the medical condition. Everyone gets "depressed" from time to time in reaction to real events that are stressful and require time and perhaps isolation to come to grips with. In that context, "depression" does seem adaptive. But I do not believe from experience that medical depression, which stikes without warning when no problem presents itself, is related . I look forward to more research in this area.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think your theory of caution related behavior has some value. But as so many others have pointed out, there is a distinction between a temporarily depressed state and long term clinical depression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvolution wise I would think Long term depression would have weeded itself out as mal-adaptive behavior. I am in long term clinical depression and at my worst I do nothing that is logically necessary for my survival. My behavior has threatened my job (which I will call providing my own food and shelter) and all of my relationships (all of my protection from a group cooperative). Since these behaviors are self destructive, while apparently passive (because I do nothing) it is still ultimately - extremely risky.
I did go out and read some of the original paper this is based on - Thank you to the commenter who made the suggestion.
The authors consider depression a symptom of adaptive behavior (like a fever is a symptom of our body fighting an infection - the fever is not helpful but is a side effect of the process). The adaptive behaviors are the items we call "symptoms" of depression - ie being lethargic, uninvolved in life, etc. I did not read far enough to see what they called suicidal behavior which is so common with depression.....
The main factor that seems to be missing from the article is an appreciation that depression exists on a severity continuum. Although the relatively milder forms might well be adaptive and, therefore, treatable via the suggested cognitive behavioral approaches debilitative depression is an entirely different matter. Severely depressed patients are unable to perform basic tasks. Thoughts of suicide are not uncommon among this population and may at times lead to the only action of which the patient is capable. Severe depression is a complex and still superficially understood malady for which SSRIs and other pharmacological interventions, along with cognitive behavioral therapy, offer the best modes of treatment at the moment. Whether speculation about the putative evolutionary advantages of this condition will have a role to play in the development of future treatments is an open question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a personal perspective, there appears to be a significantly high correlation between my episodes of depression and the degree to which I spent my time in analytical thought. It stands to my reason and experience, that the more time I spend in thought, the more my mind begins to navigate the dark tangents of possible outcomes branching out from the main idea. Like an addiction, the thought process takes over, thereby making it difficult to escape the orbit of thought. As a martial artist (Yoga, TC, QG, KF), I appreciate the positive effects that physical movement has in controlling my depression. However, given my natural proclivity and personal predilection for pensive pursuits, I quickly revert back to bobbing and sinking upon melancholy waves, once I admit a moment of contrivance, away from physical activity, to re-enter my life. Like a shark, I must keep moving, lest I join the starry band of intellects who have propelled themselves ad astra.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegardless of the doubters, I still see merit in his theory. He seems to be addressing the fact that it's a mental state that has not been disposed of by natural selection. I believe he is referring to the propensity of depression in the human species not its affects on individual's lives. Depression will affect us greatly and personally at clinical level. And the symptoms of the depression in any one of our lives can be, and is, devastating. But that may be a result of how our society blames depressed people for abhorrent behavior instead of integrating the behavior as part of a social norm. And thus allowing the person to cycle out of what could have been a normal state. Anyway, I think he's looking at it at a Meta Human (evolutionary) level, not at a clinical or sociological level. And I can say as a person that has dealt with devastating depression and anxiety almost all of my 50 years of life, what he says resonates. Hopefully his research will continue to develop his theories and it will help us to have a fresh perspective. Btw, he has a technical and detailed definition of 'ruminations'. It's not used generally as we would in daily language. He has it posted on his website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's get back to the author's original question - why didn't depression weed itself out over the course of millions of years? It reduces the chances for survival and (in severe cases) causes suicide. The answer might not lie in a single gene which turns depression on or off. Maybe the way the Evolutionary mechanics manifest itself - as it experiments, most experiments fail. Failed individuals have to exit. Not all of them have to exit by being a dinner though. Some might exit by a willful refusal to keep living on (in severe cases - self-termination). Maybe depression is simply a psychological step in "preparing" the individual for such a "willful" exit? The author might have a point there - as mammals discovered the charming new advantage of learning how to be cautious through diving into past experiences, they also discovered this same advantage was a double-edge sword. The ones who crossed the line (abused it) ended up in madhouses. To use an analogy, when the first birds tried to fly, most of them probably got severe bruises and broken bones. Maybe that's where we are now, maybe we're those "pioneer birds" just learning how to improve our survival chances by using self-critical analysis?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe characteristic sleep pattern, in depression, is early AM awakening, e.g 3AM. It might have been beneficial for a group in a cave to have someone alert at that hour.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPsychomotor retardation is also characteristic of depression.
What better way to save energy than to lie depressed in a cave while sleet pelted down outside and there was no point going out for food. This is seen especially in seasonal light depression, when the person responds to low light by being inactive
I think this article proceeds from a few misconceptions. First, it doesn't seem to be dealing with the major depression-related mood disorders but only with what is referred to as adjustment disorder with depressed mood. Full blown depression and the related illnesses dysthymia, bipolar disorder and so on are associated with difficulty concentrating, not improvements in analytical thinking. Also, it is a mistake to think that just because something is common it must have some evolutionary purpose. For example, right-handedness doesn't appear to give any evolutionary advantage over left handedness, but about 90% of people are right handed. Evolution is not the ultra-fine teleological shaping tool people often mistake it to be. Many things can happen by contingency, or as byproducts of other processes, and simply not be selected against by evolution because they don't significantly impair reproductive success. This article may be considered to be giving a hypothesis for why people get transitory "depression" when negative events happen, but that's as far is it goes in my view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting article! The article attempts to approach depression differently by attempting to state that depression can be an evolutionary advantage. I'll offer an analogy: When you are infected, your body responds through a cascade of immunological and biochemical events. This
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisraises your body temperature (fever). In medical - and evolutionary - terms, fever is a good thing, but too high a fever and no medical intervention, then you risk
dying. Thankfully we have the knowledge to treat some infections with antibiotics (curative), and treat fever with meds like acetaminophen. Unfortunately, we don't know enough about clinical depression to have a curative agent, but we do have supportive measure to help patients' symptoms (antidepressants). My concern with this article is that it may imply that it's ok to avoid treating depression due to some notion of evolutionary advantage.
I have had and still do have clinical depression. If what the authors are addressing is the garden variety blues that people who do not experience clinical depression experience, then what they have described may very well be true. What happens to me is I get to the state of not wanting to live like this anymore, whatever this is. Then I am able to begin pulling out of it by looking at what may need to change so I can live differently. That's where the rumination comes in, I allow myself to look at all possibilities - which takes time - I don't leave anything out including taking my own life, but I don't keep that as a top priority. Movement does help, but a lot of my depression comes from chronic pain and the cognitive problems caused by it and the medications I need to be on to handle it. The apathy that is part of depression makes me need to really exert my will in order to move at all. I fail to do that sometimes for weeks at a time and am also unable to cook for myself either. Jill in TX
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi I suffer from depression and have done for many years although I have not always felt 'depressed' during this time. I am 42. At an early age I was always trying to figure out what was 'wrong' at home, to try to solve/ get to the bottom of things. This is a pattern that has continued in many areas of my life. As a programmer it may have helped but I don't think so in other areas, it really can be a paralysing sort of thing to suffer from especially when all you can think about constantly is a particular thing. So first off I would not wish it on anyone and would never want to encourage it in people for the sake of testing a hypothesis in case it is something that continues for them after testing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I have found does help is to do the opposite of constant thinking/ analysing and for others who may read this article out of curiosity or looking for some clue to a solution for themselves then I have found the book 'Stop Thinking Start Living' by Richard Carlson to be very helpful.
I certainly do not think from my own experience that rumination helps, in fact the opposite is often the case. Some things in life cannot be treated like a maths problem as unlike maths being based on assumptions and laws, many events in life are not, and there is not a clear cut black or white answer and continual rumination does not help the person start to feel better. How can you when all you do is spend time on a 'problem'/ situation for which the best answer maybe to stop thinking about it altogether.
What many of the detractors of this article miss is that prior to modern medicine, sanitation and agriculture roughly half of us died before successfully reproducing and guiding our offspring to adulthood. Depression helped weed out the failures by making them easy prey or self destructive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen there are the 8 or more different schools of psychology that all follow different models of mental function. Last time I checked they all had different explanations of depression. One person's tomato may be another person's vegetable. Neither term is wrong but they are not the same. For instance "rumination". If you want to use digestive terminology to describe mental function go right ahead. Some people will find you creative and others will label you an idiot. Personally I don't much care, just fix my brain.
I am not ready to buy into the theory yet. I do believe that it may be valid on a species level. I still need some real proof though.
My experience with people may be limited and biased because I have spent too much time with people who are clinically depressed. When they "chew the cud," their thoughts come up with a lot of negative feelings that can be hard to listen to. They are not properly digesting their experiences, but rather reversing the process, expressing their pain in the direction of anyone handy enough to share it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had hoped some would find a way to express their feelings other than through their mouths (there are tones of voice as well as words), but I never found them.
The author only mentions the debilitating aspects of depression in passing. These can not be offset by the hypothetical benefit he describes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do believe that it is likely that at least some of the major mechanisms of depression may be selected for. For example, when some people become depressed as the result of social or economic frustrations, they have a tendency to lose self-esteem and assertiveness and withdraw from social situations. This withdrawal is arguably more beneficial to the society than violent response. A model of this in animal behavior is seen in the competition for mates,where after dominance is established the sub-dominant animal withdraws rather than attacks. Hopefully human societies will one day develop better ways to preserve social order without denying individual potential. In any case there are apparently many cases of depression, for example those triggered by lack of light, in which these socially adaptive mechanisms are erroneously triggered.
What about persons who are not very analytical at any stage of their life, yet become depressed? What about the socially incompetent, not very intelligent yet highly depressed person? The article's hypothesis idealises depression. I find the idea of creativity as a benefit of manic-depressive disorder to be much more satisfying, although that does not explain everything either. The idea that if people have a certain property then that property should have some definite evolutionary advantage is fallacious. Nature does not produce perfection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to add that if certain people are socially sensitive and prone to depression, their sensitivity may cause both the depression and their social sensitivity. I would also like to add that there is more or less constructive rumination. A composer searching for ideas for a symphony may feel empty, and in that way act depressed, but not all people who are depressed are that for such reasons. There is, furthermore, a strong tendency in us to look for reasons and patterns, and it seems that evolutionary psychology is taking on the role of a 'new' theory of design. A simple reason why we get depressed is not that it is advantageous but that our brains are so large as to be at times too large for their own good. Lack of serotonin (a nutrient) may be a case in point. Yet, of course, speculations are welcome, so the article is at least thought-provoking. Best wishes!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice presentation and a compelling idea. A possible extension (that would bypass the need to consider "depression" per se as advantageous) would be that the clinical state is due to extreme values of an underlying quantitative trait with the selective properties you suggest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd be more inclined to believe depression has evolved so we can sit around in the winter months during ice ages.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"To ruminate" means "to chew the cud". So you'll have to come up with some other phrase.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompletely anecdotal, but I gave up diet soft drinks for other health reasons (born spurs from the phosphoric acid), and depression lifted completely in 8 weeks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find most intriguing about this article, is the comments, the author postulates that depressed people are more analytical. If you go through these comments and read all of them, many are from people who admit to suffering from some form of depression(myself included). The interesting thing is the high quality of thought/coherence/diction/grammer in these comments. I read alot of Sciam articles and most of them have comments riddled with ingnorant/biased/political/misguided slants, not this one. All comments are of a very highly organized and thought out manner. I think this in itself lends some credence to the author's article. Personally, I find myself sometimes immersed in what I would call mild depression, I have reduced appetite, withdrawal from social engagement, persistent negative thoughts, however, I never experienced thoughts of suicide. I think the idea of depression as useful has merit, the problem is being able to deal with it in your everyday life, sometimes my spells last a day, sometimes it could be two weeks, I never know how deep or long it will last each time. I can function pretty well during these times, or 'fake it', I merely contain it while in public. It is nice at least to think of this as a positive function and not a negative part of my personality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you consider that human or even chimpanzee-grade intelligence is an extremely recent and isolated phenomenon when viewed on evolutionary timescales, the notion that evolution should have eliminated most of our psychological problems is highly suspect, I think. No doubt, depression utilizes highly conserved systems. So what. Glaucoma exerts its effects via highly conserved systems. The real question is why aren't all humans constantly experiencing "brain lock", like microsoft's famous "Blue Screen of Death". I have been depressed; trust me, it's a malfunction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to be saying depression is an emotional response to a realistic understanding of the situation. What a depressing thought!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the authors refer to as depression seems more like a bout of sadness following a misadventure, which is used by the person suffering the sadness to examine the causes of the misadventure, analysing them and developing a strategy to avoid such misadventure in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey miss two important points though: 1. proper depressions often do not have an identifiable cause which can be examined in this way
2. people who are depressed tend to be irrational in their analyses. They will use their full mental capacity to see everything in as negative a light as possible, friends, loved ones, work, cherished activities. They can thus convince themselves their friends and loved ones do not care for them any more and drive them away; or that they are not good enough for their job and quit it; in cases where this is not true and proper analytical thinking without the negative spin on it caused by depression would have revealed that. The "analytical thinking" may find some solutions to problems that would not have been found was the person not depressed, but I think in the huge majority of cases the depressed analysis devolves in a downward spiral causing many more problems.
WOW. Thanks for a positive spin on such a depressing topic. I am recovering from a MAJOR depression. Sometimes the ONLY thing that could get me out of bed was the need to go to the bathroom. I agree that there is an advantage to having the brain 'forced' into a shut down mode vs. a melt down mode. The 'talking therapies' do more than just help one analyze and or externalize their thoughts, they maintain social connectedness. The depressed individual is dependent on this connection and is at serious risk if he or she becomes totally isolated. Analysis is part of the equation, but for me, the analogy includes a less 'intellectual' component... I was "emotionally vomiting"; the poison was (for me) the betrayal of trust. I also know PTSD's. Many parts of a traumatic experience cannot be analyzed and certainly not all at once, and the brain can 'bury' all or part of it for later 'rumination'. What I most like about this author's take on depression, is the idea that it is part of a recovery process, a healing process. The darkest (and most suicidal) of thoughts is that there is no end to the depression. The feeling (or analysis) that everything has gone to hell, the end, forever 'broken', is SO bleak and painful that R.I.P. is at least an option when there seems to be no more options. Just the thought that there is a mechanism in my brain that is HELPING me by bringing on the depression also implies that if allowed to continue its processes, I can recover, is more than enough for now. It is like discovering that ADHD has two "downers" attached to it, deficit AND disorder, but might just be a mental modality that functions best in a hunter gatherer society. The article gives new meaning to giving myself permission to heal, depression as a means to an end, a natural normal process to regain mental health and balance. Instead of I know I am alive, I am in pain, it changes to I know I am still healing, I am still in pain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBoth my psychiatrist and my personal experience contradict the idea that depression somehow improves the quality of analysis. When I am in a depressive episode, my concentration suffers dramatically. My doctor reported that people with depression often evidence a drop in IQ of up to 20 points compared to their non-depressed (baseline) IQ. Much more research remains before one should conclude that this illness is somehow adaptive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRE: depression as a response to accurate understanding of a situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearch on mood as described by Dr. Martin Seligman revealed that pessimistic people are more accurate judges of their performance on a task or test. Optimistic people are happier, but less accurate. This is consistent with other research finding, for example, that people who "consume" more news (reading newspapers, watching CNN) have higher rates of depression. What a choice, eh?
I am still extremely skeptical that analytical and social-analysis skills actually improve during major depression. Certainly not in my experience or observations.
I thought ruminating took place in the rumen, not the mouth. Basically, when some people talk, they are not chewing the fat. Their diet, the world they live in, is too limited.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my experience working around adolescents with depression (not as a therapist, but as a teacher in a small private school where many students have diagnosed depression) the "problems" that they ruminate on are far more existential and less "solvable" than the example in this article where the woman chooses what to about a cheating husband. It's more as if their minds are grappling with the cruel or grotesuqe aspects of adulthood. Some of the "problems" withdrawn depressed students articulate are things like " I'm in a wheel chair and I'll never have normal sexual activity" " My borther died in an accident while I was dirving and my mother will never forgive me" " The person I love does not love me, I'm worthless." While I would never advocate sweeping these sorts of problems under the rug, sometimes probing and dismantling them doesn't work either because they're not problems in the solvable sense, they're just really crummy truths. Encouraging young people to solve them can be tinged with an insulting hubris and it can meet with failure. I don't think distracting them is necessarily beneficial ( or possible), but helping situate their problems in a greater context is important and should, i believe, balance any encouragement of isolation and deep focus on problems
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with sjd0218. I have only experienced depression one or two times (OK, maybe 3) but the notion that it's a way for the brain to process difficult problems seems totally wrong-headed. Depression is marked by a complete breakdown of rational thought. It's a state in which there are no facts to consider, there is no problem to solve. It's a mixture of dread, anxiety, lethargy, and misery that completely overwhelms the brain. If anything, brainwork (what little there is) achieves nothing because of this overwhelming feeling; things that ordinarily would be dealt with easily become confusing, insurmountable obstacles. The author sounds a bit like Mr. Spock on Star Trek: trying to make sense of something in a logical way that is diametrically opposed to logic. I think he proves his error, not his thesis, when he says that writing expressively helps. I believe this is probably true, and it's probably the first time a depressed person would ever attempt such a thing, not a continuation of it. Depressed people are not analyzing -- they are overwhelmed and incapable of analyzation. If you force them to try, it might make them feel a little better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe authors are way off the mark…rat’s receptors are like ours…OK, that I’ll buy. But then they say it is an evolutionary advantage to be depressed because it helps with analytical thinking, and claim it must be useful or it would have been selected out. There are two problems with that theory. First some evolutionary advantages are beneficial to the group, but deadly to the individual. Second depression’s aid to analytical thinking would be of no advantage to animals who don’t think analytically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a depressive, and there is absolutely no advantage to not being able to properly function. I'd rather NOT be stuck in bed thinking endlessly about crap I can't change. I'd rather be doing something, you know, PRODUCTIVE!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression also promotes withdrawing from a dangerous situation, restraining from activity, and having an opportunity to heal following an experience of pain or injury. It is an integral component of a normal response to physical pain. No doubt, in evolution, hiding away and avoiding social interaction was an opportunity to heal and thus a survival trait. Seasonal affective disorder may be seen as helpful when spending winters in a confined situation such as cave-dwelling. Depressive responses to modern social stresses may, as your article suggests, be the atavistic expression of what formerly were useful survival traits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLOL @ comparing depression to the "Blue Screen of Death"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcept with Microsoft, you can actually reboot the computer. Unfortunately, you can't reboot the brain.
Depression has meant the following for me: quitting what were enjoyable studies, have trouble going out, lost most friends and family, bouts of insomnia, take pleasure in practically nothing aside from sitting very still, almost in a meditative state, with as relaxed a mind as possible. The more I move, the more I find negative, physically and mentally stressful rumination increases. My depression has come on as a result of years worth of high stress situations - the need to sit very still, very quietly now does seem to be a response to this. It's not helpful with day to day functioning though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you are ruminating in the throes of depression on a problem that you have the means of solving yourself, isolation may help you do that. But if your problem can only be solved by some type of intervention - legal advice or medical attention for instance - and if you lack the means of access - you'll be trapped in "squirrel cage" and possibly "magical" thinking and your problems will not only remain unresolved but will only become worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn addition, "learned helplessness" can easily be an outcome of prolonged abusive, painful, unresolved situations. The magical, fantastical thinking that sometimes ensues as an escape from the "squirrel cage" can be an art source, but can also stymie access to the means of expression and more importantly to the simple trust necessary to the act of sharing.
I think only in the instances where depression is balanced by emotional rebound into elevated states does inspiration bear fruit. And this can only happen when you have some realization that you aren't trapped. It really depends on whether you can "burn both ends" of the candle.
I think that the depressed can think themselves out of the depression the same way that they got themselves in it or it will eventually pass as things stabilize in their life. The constant self loathing has got to be tiring. The depressed are non the less intelligent, so intelligent in fact that they cannot stand themselves, but let them hang around some truly stupid people and they will feel better about themselves right away. =D
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor an alternative evolutionary perspective on depression see article at Web site below.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://fmdrl.org/index.cfmevent=c.beginBrowseD&clearSelections=1&criteria=Bloom#1009
I would thoroughly disagree, as many posters have said, when it comes to full-blown clinical/serious depression...which I think should be viewed as a potentially fatal disease. Pointless ruminations about "problems" that have no solution is a hallmark. I've experienced a tendency to turn inward and obsess about the insoluble, such as "with no siblings and no partner, and now many deceased family members, I may be alone some day"--with ensuing concern/sadness about my mother's health. Medication--although it's had some terrible side effects--does indeed stop me from ruminating on what is, rationally speaking, inevitable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom that point of view I would agree with the (rather depressing) idea that depression may be a place from which insight is incredibly clear; in fact, it was once said to me that in order to live, we must all engage in a certain amount of self-protective denial--otherwise, knowing that death was coming, we'd be paralyzed by fear of our mortality (and that of everyone we love). Depression removes that denial...medication seems to restore it. If I dwell too much on dark thoughts/thoughts of death (as I am right now), it might put me in a bad state of mind--I simply tend not to "go there" with antidepressant medication (SNRI). It bothers me to be--in effect--drug-dependent, and I think the idea of depression being an adaptation is attractive proposition, but it seems too often to be fatal. I also find that if I cut back on my medication, a slight and temporary hypomania occurs--THAT'S when things get done/thought of/solved/finished, etc. If only it would last.
Finally, we have to consider that it's possible that depression simply hasn't been selected out by evolution YET.
Next some genius at the Univ of Chicago School of Stupidomics, will create a new theory stating that economic depression is actually beneficial, especially to those suffering most from it. Thus they can justify reducing salaries, benefits, and random firing of workers as a means of creating a more healthy society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Scientific American.
I would add that ruminating as I described above about inevitabilities such as death can be paralyzing, leading to overwhelming anxiety...which leads to the desire to escape from one's own mind via sleep. Or worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally--when I am feeling truly depressed, I sometimes thing I'd like to see a friend because that would be normal and would make me feel more normal...but then I think, who'd want to be around me right now? So I withdraw and avoid people, to spare them ME. Truly, truly maladaptive, as it only makes for more isolation.
For an alternative evolutionary view of drpression. google Brave New World of Antidepressants: No Need to Grieve
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAuthors’ Response: My co-author and I are gratified that so many have provided very thoughtful comments. I thought I would write a couple of posts to address some of the points made in the comments. These points are addressed in greater detail in the Psychological Review article on which the Mind Matters piece was based. Unfortunately, I cannot make available an electronic copy of the published piece as that would violate the APA’s copyright. However, I am allowed to post an electronic copy of the manuscript, which is almost the same as the published article. People may download a copy of that from my website, which is linked to my name at the end of the Mind Matters piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe goal of the Mind Matters piece was to distill the larger paper into a much shorter piece where we could communicate the essence of our idea to a larger, interested audience. But it is not meant to be a full defense of our hypothesis. It simply is not possible to summarize all the literature that we cover in that paper, or address all possible criticisms, in this forum. Given this caveat, the next several posts will address several issues.
This first of these posts will discuss the fact that our hypothesis is at odds with many common beliefs about depression.
The second will discuss whether our hypothesis is just applicable to temporary sadness and mild depression, or whether it is also applicable to many bouts of depression that would currently satisfy current diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder.
The final post I will make addresses comments by those who were skeptical of our hypothesis based on their personal struggles with depression.
These posts will not answer everyone’s questions about our hypothesis, but we hope they answer some questions. To those with further questions, we encourage them to read our Psychological Review article.
Author: Some people were skeptical about our hypothesis because it is at odds with widely held beliefs about depression, including the medical view that depression is a disorder. In our Psychological Review article on which the Mind Matters piece is based, we explicitly challenge many of these beliefs. Many beliefs about depression are unfounded because the evidence for them is either very limited or contradictory. We discuss a few.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBelief: People in depressed mood states are psychologically paralyzed and are poor at solving their problems.
The evidence for this belief is very limited. There are no studies that show that depressed people are poor at solving the problems that triggered their depressive episodes. It is true that depressed people often perform worse than non-depressed people on the tasks that psychologists give them. However, that this is because they are thinking so much about other things (probably the social problems that caused their depressive episodes) that they cannot focus on laboratory tasks.
Belief: A successful therapy for treating depression is to help patients with depression change the way they think about their situation.
There is no evidence that trying to change the way depressed people think helps them get better. If anything, it is associated with worse outcomes. This is likely to raise the hackles of clinicians, but we stand by the claim. Read our article.
Belief: Antidepressant medications are effective therapies for depression.
Antidepressants often provide little relief to depressed people. When they do reduce symptoms, they do not prevent people from having relapses of depression when they stop taking them. As a result, people can find themselves taking antidepressants for years because psychiatrists are worried they will relapse. Antidepressants do not treat the cause of depression. Read our article.
Belief: Depression often occurs for no reason.
It sometimes appears that depressed people don’t have serious problems because the problems are often very sensitive, or because they don’t want to believe they have problems, and so they are often reluctant to tell clinicians about them. Researchers don’t really know how often depression occurs in the absence of serious problems because they don’t have a good way of dealing with the fact that people may have various reasons for not disclosing their problems.
In our article, we address other common beliefs about depression that warrant re-examination given current evidence.
Author: Some commentators seemed to think that our hypothesis would be most applicable to transient sadness or mild depression, but is not applicable to major depression, which is a disorder. It seems to us that they are quite content to believe that 30-50% of people, or even more, truly have malfunctioning brains, and that most of these instances of malfunctioning brains occur in young adulthood.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe do believe that there are true instances of depressive disorder if for no other reason than that all organs in the body are susceptible to malfunctioning. There is no reason to believe that the neurological mechanisms involved in depression are immune from malfunctioning, so depressive disorder undoubtedly exists. We just believe that depression is overdiagnosed as a disorder, probably dramatically so. Most people would agree that schizophrenia is a true mental disorder, but only about 2% of the population will meet diagnostic criteria for it sometime in their lives. The much higher estimates of depressive disorder are themselves reason to suspect that psychiatrists probably don’t have the diagnostic criteria right yet.
So we use the term ‘depression’ to refer to a range of emotional experience that encompasses transient sadness on one end and severe, even chronic, depression that would meet current diagnostic criteria for disorder on the other end. And while we do believe that depressive disorder exists, because we believe that depressive disorder is overdiagnosed, we intend our arguments to apply to much of what is currently classified as depressive disorder. In our Psychological Review article, we explain why we take this view at greater length. But the short answer is that the evidence that depression promotes an analytical thinking style comes from people who meet clinical criteria as well as people with less severe symptoms. Read the article.
Author: Some people made comments in which they doubted our hypothesis because, in their personal struggles with depression, it didn’t help them think through their problems. This is actually the most difficult kind of comment to respond to. Depression is very painful, and I am not a clinician, though my co-author is a psychiatrist with 30 years of full-time clinical experience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are some kinds of evidence that would refute our hypothesis. However, the fact that some individuals say that their personal or clinical experience with depression is inconsistent with our hypothesis is not sufficient to refute it. Here are 3 possibilities:
1. Depression does exist as a disorder, though it is probably overdiagnosed, so it is possible that some such instances are genuine disorder.
2. Under our hypothesis, depression is triggered by complex problems, and some problems may be so complex that even analysis can’t help solve them.
3. People differ in how they cope with depression, and some try to avoid painful thoughts and feelings—by using drugs or alcohol, by distracting themselves, or by suppressing their feelings. However, avoidance doesn’t work—it is associated with longer, more painful bouts of depression. Some instances in which depression does not help people solve their problems may be because they are using avoidant coping strategies.
The desire to find quick fixes for painful feelings is normally adaptive. When your hand is in the fire, it is important to act quickly. With depression, people often try to avoid their feelings precisely because trying to quickly reduce pain is often adaptive. However, complex problems of the sort that we think trigger depression will not be solved by quick solutions. In our article, we argue that part of the evolutionary legacy of depression is that people have to learn to endure their feelings so that they can take a slower, methodical, analytical approach to their problems. This idea will undoubtedly bother some people, but evolution did not promise us that we would always be happy, or that all the problems we face would be easy to solve. And it is consistent with ancient spiritual/philosophical traditions that see emotional pain as an opportunity for growth and insight into oneself and the problems of life. In other words, these traditions may exist because their purpose is to help people learn how to view their depressive pain in a way that will enable them to analyze and gain insight into their problems.
Author: A final note. People have made so many very interesting and insightful comments that I can’t possibly respond to them all. But I like that you are all seriously thinking about this. It is very good to be skeptical, and we don’t want our hypothesis to be accepted uncritically. Our hypothesis is probably wrong or incomplete at some level. But we think there are good reasons to believe that many of the common beliefs about depression are seriously flawed. Read our article for that. From a scientific standpoint, it is good to be skeptical about all hypotheses until the evidence forces you to accept one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it is true that 30-50 % of people experience and episode of major depression then these episodes are part of normal life. The ability to think through and confront a problem involves a high tolerance for frustration, disappointment, and confusion, hopefully leading to an adaptive solution. But this is very different from the paralysis of clinical depression or being trapped in rageful loops of repetitious thinking which get people into treatment for "depression". The kleinians hold that achieving the "depressive position" in infancy - in other words tolerating the disappoitment of parental limitations - is a crucial step in psychological development. So it seems that some depressive thinking is indeed adaptive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnxiety is the result of not being able to identify the root of the underlying problem causing the depression. Rumination is the process of uncovering the cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRuminating means "chewing the cud". It is from the same root as "ruminant", an animal that chews cud.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat you described is exactly what the writer is describing. You need to read the article again.
Don't you get frustrated when you try to solve a task, but find you lack the skill to do so? A person lacking sufficient analytical skill to resolve the issues troubling him, is going to suffer depression due to his failure. Such a person is more likely to turn to avoidance/self-medicating responses that only briefly alleviate the symptoms. The solution is to acquire knowledge and insight from others to resolve the issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about CBT?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLetting nature take its course through rumination seems to conflict with finding that people work through depression more quickly with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is different than simply amplifying rumination through writing and conversation.
The trick is knowing which problems deserve rumination, and which do not. The "Serenity Prayer".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am manic depressive, and i agree, i have many complex social problems which take years to unravel. A part of this is because i was not in control of the situation,which simply means i have a more highly developed sense of social responsibility than most other people who just said this is someone else's problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article was very interesting to me. I'm always in search for reasons to why I get depressed and maybe find a cure within myself. I know why I get depressed, the reason I'm depressed is because i can't stop thinking and analyzing the past. I should have done it this this way, I could have done that that way, why didn't I do this differently and so on. It drives me insane. I tell myself the past is the past. There is no way of changing that and dwelling on it won't change anything either. But my brain refuses to understand this no matter how hard I try, or maybe I'm not trying hard enough. Meditation sometimes works for me, I can remove all thoughts from my mind for at least a couple of minutes but eventually a picture of the past always seems to linger it's way into my mind. During meditation I don't analyze these pictures in my mind but just seeing them brings me down. I also have trouble sleeping because my thoughts consume me to the point that I must get out of bed and engage in some activity. I've been playing classical piano since I was 6 years old and as I got older i found it to be somewhat therapeutic to me. Especially when i know the piece really well and my mind can just fall into a hypnotic state of enjoyment. But when I'm analyzing a piece and really reading and playing note by note that's when my mind decides to throw in pictures in my mind from the past, things that I wish i could change but obviously can't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow here is the interesting part of this article. I can learn the piano piece almost immediately even though I have these thoughts of the past bothering me. I'm not analyzing these thoughts but I am analyzing the classical piece very intently.
I thought that was interesting. Am I able to play a difficult classical piece merely because I'm being annoyed by past thoughts or maybe I could possibly be better in piano if I didn't have these thoughts in my mind at all?
I think this is a great counterpoint to what American medicine always tries to do, medicate or fix before spending more cycles on trying to understand the full nature of a condition. I experienced depression as a teenager and now as an adult at times in periods of extreme personal stress and burden. I found while painful, I made my way out of the depressions by talking to friends and family, and doing exactly what is described here. I focused on the problems I saw as the root causes, dissected them, tackled the overall issue in smaller chunks and addressed it in same manner. I firmly believe depression is a natural defense mechanism. I think medication should be a last resort in treatment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf depression is adaptive, why would it cause the brain to shrink and be less able to learn new information - which new evidence has shown? The article was unclear about methodology, but I'm inclined to believe that the relationship is much more complex than that depression "causes" analytic thinking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuoting the author's comment: "Our hypothesis is probably wrong or incomplete at some level. But we think there are good reasons to believe that many of the common beliefs about depression are seriously flawed. Read our article for that. From a scientific standpoint, it is good to be skeptical about all hypotheses until the evidence forces you to accept one."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is completely out of sync with the level of certainty expressed in the final few paragraphs of the article. The second-to-last paragraph reads almost like direct medical advice. I'm sure that wasn't intentional, but it seems a little irresponsible to close the piece that way and then walk it back this much in the comment section.
I'm as interested in these evolutionary psych theories as the next guy, but let's just keep in mind that like most such theories this is one among an unknown number of plausible stories that fit the (limited) data, with no attempt at direct experimental verification and no clear null hypothesis to even test.
On the other hand there have been hundreds of direct studies done on the effectiveness of different methods of therapy, many of which support the stop-the-rumination-cycle approach that this article dismisses. I'm no expert and I'm sure the authors know this literature far better than I do, but do they really believe that a depressed reader should switch to a different type of therapy because a few scientists came up with yet another story about how xyz could have been an evolutionary advantage? If so, I think they buried the lede.
How does this sit with Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don't think people have more social dilemmas in the winter. Perhaps SAD just increases the likelihood of the dilemmas triggering depression-like symptoms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm an analytical person, who has trouble leaving problems to solve themselves. I took anti-depressants for three months a few years ago on a doctor's recommendation. I noticed that my problems didn't go away, but that I simply stopped caring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was weird and unproductive for me. I stopped taking them and decided I could do other things to cope. (Sunshine, friends, pleasurable tasks).
A friend and I agreed once that theologians and hymn writers were often prone to depression (Martin Luther, William Cowper to name a few). We both agreed that these types were also intelligent and analytical. It just seems to go hand in hand.
I find it hard to believe that depression improves one's abilities. The most serious case I know of, a woman who committed suicide, was paralyzed by it and lost interest in everything and could only sleep and cry. It's possible that depression has no value by itself but is an accidental concommitant of another facility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is post menopause relate to mental illness and depression?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been on Cymbalta now for 7 yrs. I tried gradually coming off it and got severely depressed and sad. Was that my TRUE self coming through?
When do you know its time or your ready to get off your medication?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you explain to your teenager that it would be better to take prescribed medication vs. them self medicating themselves with marijuana?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is silly. In any highly social organism, and with any behaviour with strongly social components, you should look for the evolutionary reason first within social function.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is the social function of depression? It is, of course, to reduce the social influence of the depressed individual, even in extreme cases leading to his permanent removal through premature death. The reason why that is useful is obvious: suicide is a far less stressful (for the tribe) method of getting rid of malfunctioning members than murder.
This suggests depression is merely a suicide switch, the macroscopic version of cell apoptosis, that can be thrown by our tribe when our deaths or disempowerment is necessary for the good of the tribe. This would correlate well with the observation that depression is more likely during the onset of resource-poor conditions (e.g. winter) when the tribe may need to cull members, and less likely under emergency small-group lifeboat conditions, when every member is urgently needed.
I don't think you have experienced chemically-based depression as opposed to situational depression. It is a curse and a thief!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas someone currently struggling with extremely severe depression (currently on my 45 Electroconvulsive therapy treatment), i can tell you that very often in severe depressives, the analytical part is wiped away along with most of the brain. even getting out of bed for us in this population takes enormous almost impossible effort. i think this is an interesting article, but not reflective of the scope of depression and people who suffer from it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe key question is where is the line drawn between physiological and pathological. That is, what are the differentiating features.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting article. In my own experience as a Graphoanalyst (handwriting analyst), critical thinkers do not come out especially high on the bipolar/manic-depressive scale. No, something else seems to be going on within depressive individuals, or populations, and it appears more social than analytical - this based on numerous trait inventories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill, there are some correlations. Musicians, for example, tend to be highly analytical, and in turn adept at science/technology. Music itself tends to be an expression of mathematics, from basic to theoretical. Introduce intuitiveness; enter inherent skill and creativity.
As for depression, it appears to cross virtually all lines, from the mundane to the genius. Also all age groups, including the very young - although the depression may mask itself early on as hyperactivity, eating/anxiety disorders, and/or anti-social behaviors (in extreme cases).
Yet, the incidence of depression, particularly reoccurring or chronic depression, seems most prevalent when accompanied by pronounced creativity. Which in certain aspects lends validity to the observations outlined in the article.
There also appears to be an intellectual component; the more advanced, the higher the incidence of depression. This is a general observation, not a hard-and-fast rule.
But here's the contradiction; the higher one's analytical ability, the lower the incidence of [chronic] depression. From this point on it gets more complicated, suggesting that "types" of analytical skill or development need to be investigated, and broken down into sub-sets.
Are truck drivers more prone to depression than musicians? How about housewives compared to career women? Teachers vs. students? Writers vs. actors? Soldiers vs. policemen?
That individuals isolate themselves as a means of self-analysis as the article suggests is, I suspect, a mistaken hypothesis. A person suffering a severe depressive episode is hyper-sensitive to ALL external stimulus, wherein the slightest stress represents an all-out assault on one's sanity. In addition, such retreats from the world are not exclusive to depressives - although more likely given the sheer numbers.
In the end, one must ask the mouse how it feels to be caught in the statistical trap. Not good, I'd imagine.
"Belief: People in depressed mood states are psychologically paralyzed and are poor at solving their problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe evidence for this belief is very limited."
I'm not a scientist, so I can't comment on the breadth or paucity of "evidence." What I CAN say, however, is that there is no word better than "paralysis" to describe my cognitive capacity when I am depressed, when anguish and despair overwhelm my very being. I am unable to maintain a coherent thought for more than a second or two. I have absolutely no cognitive focus; it is as if every neuron dedicated to structure and organization has gone on vacation and my consciousness is at the mercy of a waterfall of random thoughts. I am, simply, incapable of thinking, cognitively anesthetized, and emotionally unable to feel anything but hopelessness and despair.
I have struggled with this for almost 30 years now, and it's rampant in my family. I stumbled across this article quite by accident; it's not a journal that I regularly read. But after having read the article and the comments, I'm pretty convinced that whatever kind of depression that the authors have been studying is not the same dark beast that turns a 168-IQ multi-degreed individual into a lump of clay filled with the cold hopelessness and suicidal anguish of utter despair.
"Better at solving problems?" What an obscenely humorous notion. You know not whereof you speak.
I have always been a problem solver. I could analyze the situation and usually come up with a reasonable solution. I was over-focused and diligent in my work. I have had depression ongoing since 1990 or before. I have done the journals, I have had the therapy that helps solve my problems or worries not just talk about them but my treatment resistant depression continues on as I find myself totally unable to focus, have no energy left, can't concentrate and am becoming apathetic in most parts of my life. Once I acknowledged, wrote down, talked and tried to work out my worries I found I had no control over anything much did things I felt I should only because I ought to not because I wanted to. I have to change meds regularly because my body adapts to them so quickly. I realized I was responsible for way too much for one person but my guilt and not having anyone to turn some of these responsibilities over too continue to make me force myself to do things I hate. How does this fit into the equation. Depression is hereditary in my family on both sides and at least 1 person from each generation or cousins, brothers, sisters, etc. has it at different
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdegrees. I keep searching for something that will help me over a long period of time and so does my psychiatrist but so far, the older I get, the worse it gets.
Concentration and focus? Hmmm. The question is - what does the focus turn to? In most of the cases of depression I've been around (and I've been around quite a number) is that the brain is on a hamster wheel... going 'round and 'round and 'round with self-victimization and self-pitiful thoughts. The sufferers marinate in those thoughts without resolution and create misery for everyone around them. If it's a 'beneficial' adaptation it needs some serious re-working.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcentration and focus? Hmmm. The question is - what does the focus turn to? In most of the cases of depression I've been around (and I've been around quite a number) is that the brain is on a hamster wheel... going 'round and 'round and 'round with self-victimization and self-pitiful thoughts. The sufferers marinate in those thoughts without resolution and create misery for everyone around them. If it's a 'beneficial' adaptation it needs some serious re-working.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcentration and focus? Hmmm. The question is - what does the focus turn to? In most of the cases of depression I've been around (and I've been around quite a number) is that the brain is on a hamster wheel... going 'round and 'round and 'round with self-victimization and self-pitiful thoughts. The sufferers marinate in those thoughts without resolution and create misery for everyone around them. If it's a 'beneficial' adaptation it needs some serious re-working.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, I always thought that if you're not depressed, you're not paying attention. now i'm re-thinking this...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid the writers of this article ever have depression? I can't understand how they compare the obsessing on issues that happens when one is depressed with problem solving. The endless reflection on issues is not helpful - it leads nowhere, solves nothing. That's why one keeps doing it over and over. That's why counselling and other talking therapies are so useful, they break the hamster-wheel cycle of thinking the problems round and round but only ever from the same perspective
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe view that depression (or what was then called melancholia) serves the function of promoting analytical thinking has a long history. Marsilio Ficino, the 15th-century Florentine astrologer, wrote that melancholia helped getting to the "center" of things, plumbing the depths of experience and solving the hardest philosophical problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe depressed person has the ablility to deeply ponder an issue or "problem" and come to a conclusion of action. However (and this is the problem with depression as I have it) the actual action brings with it a whole other set of issues and problems associated wtih executing that action. This is why depressed people often know what to do, but never have the ability to actually carry the action out. Many depressed people therefore shelter themselves from the insecurity of not knowing the outcome and simply do nothing. (Un)fortunately, depression allows you to imagine almost every possibly outcome of a particular situation. With my own case, I have recognized this gap of thinking and executing and have actually started using depression as a major advantage. It works very well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are going to see the world (and life in general) for what it truely is. I read somewhere that perhaps the people who are always cheerful, happy, etc. are the ones with a mental disorder as they are creating a false sense of reality for themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisillinois1869
I've read all the comments and I think that we are dealing with two kinds of answer to depression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn one side there's people who get overwhelmed and can't think analitically about the problem, and in the other, people who "overthink" what is happening to them and therefore, are extremely analytical.
I suffer from depression, and I know what I have to do to start solving the things that won't let me have peace of mind, the execution is the difficult part for me because I feel that I'm gonna be rejected and left aside, so instead of doing something that is good for me, I always end up doing things that will make everyone happy but myself miserable.
Excuse my typing, english is my second lenguage.
The benefit (if this article has any truth at all to it) to depression wouldn't seem all too evident in our sound bite world. But were you to take a trip back in time to, say, pre agriculture, where the kind of distractions one can expect would be limited to fundamental necessities (gathering, hunting, child rearing, community), I can imagine depression to be at least less debilitating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's more, it's commonly known that broodish and contemplative people, though sometimes difficult and self possessed, are the most likely source to difficult solutions.
Handy folk to have around when everyone else is flightely playing volleyball on the beach.
Although two piece bikini's and volleyball do make a fine pair.
Yeah,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's just about spot on. I solve problems for a living and spent a lot of years trying to solve my family's problems, depression is a feeling I wrestle with. And, when I have sustained bouts of thought, I often get depressed a week later as I come down. During the thought process I also feel helpless, especially with the big problems.
I had my first depressive episode about 8 years ago, I have subsequently had a couple of chronic depressive episodes (I'll spare you the details) that included medicine, therapy, etc. I am now drug free (three years) and I manage my depression by stopping what I am doing and thinking about it (rumination) and then writing about it. This is working for me. For me, the ultimate fix is not thinking less - what a load of BS - but thinking more, getting to reality, and then somehow facing it. And God, you need to be brave, but it's doable.
Nice article, Jamie Dobson (http://www.theotherjamiedobson.com/)
It appears that the author is writing primarily about ordinary depression, rather than clinical depression. The two are significantly different states of mind -- similar symptoms, possibly some overlap in mechanisms, but I don't think they bear enough deep resemblance to each other for observations about one to be helpful in analyzing the evolutionary drivers of the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article rings so true to my own experience of depression. For the past three and a half years I have been debilitated after a major life change that I did not want appeared to be on the horizon. I had to cease working. I had had some other problems in the past, namely rape during my first week of college and a poorly chosen marriage, and I was aware of some issues in my childhood. However, I had always insisted on persisting, mainly using work and ambition to rally myself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first two years of my "sabbatical" I spent (with the help of my long standing therapist) just learning to be okay with feeling bad and coming to discover that I would be safe if I relaxed and learning she would be there to help. I had to contend with my anxiety and reduce my vigilance enough to stop avoidant behaviors like volunteer projects (when I could do during an upswing). I also had to learn that I could survive without having my identity tied to the work that I did.
In the process I cut ties to three friends and as the article suggests sometimes we have to cut ties because we sense that they are not helpful to us. I wasn't sure at the time why I didn't want to be in touch with these dear friends but I found myself unduly preoccupied by those relationships and I sensed that they would be a huge distraction to getting to the reasons behind my depression. I was not contributing to our household income after all, and so I came to be very rational about what would move me closer or further away from my goal of getting to the bottom of my problems.
At the same time I had to contend with dissociation which was a huge, huge issue for me. We would uncover something in therapy and it could devastate me for weeks at a time, keeping me from being able to do much of anything. I would be depressed for weeks without let up. I would have a hard time eating, bathing, doing basic household chores.
All the while I wrote daily to my therapist sometimes sending multiple messages a day. Over time I got more comfortable with the depression. Again as the longer article indicates, at one point the insight that emerged in my writing deepened as I got more and more adept at letting myself submit to the depression rather than work to avoid it. It took a very long time to let go of my avoidant habits.
I am near the end of my sabbatical now and doing the intense work of consolidation. I love that the authors say depression helps you get a larger amount of working memory. I certainly need as much working memory as I can get as I pull together all the bits that I have learned. For a while I had been feeling much better, still working hard at therapy but very functional. In particular I had been eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day - something I had always wanted to do. Then I happened into some new information and I found myself not interested in eating well, not interested in sex, not interested in exercise. I knew I could fight it but I also knew that would be stupid. I had come to learn this intuitively. I would feel better, the depressive phase would end if I let myself go. I resumed staying in bed in the morning doing lots of reflecting, eating my first meal late morning, stopping exercise, eating lots of simple sugars, and sitting around thinking all day.
Shockingly, everything I have read in this article has been true for me. I have had to learn what is outlined here by trial and error, trusting my therapist, and thinking I was crazy when I turned into myself and away from my previously vibrant life. I would have loved to have had this article along the way to compare my experience against and to give me courage. Yes, it has seemed insane to be out of commission for three and a half years. I felt so awful about myself. But I knew that if I got to the bottom of my problems I would have a much, much better quality of life for the next 40 or 50 years. In that context three, even four years, seemed like nothing. Even though I haven't finished consolidating all that I've learned, I already know the decades ahead will be so much easier and I will know myself enough that I won't make the same choices that brought on my depression.
JSRocks - This past week I came across two amazing resources for only children - Bernice Sorensen's website at http://www.onlychild.org.uk/phdi/p1.nsf/supppages/onlychild?opendocument&part=2 and Carl Pickardt's book The Future of Your Only Child. The book, even though it is geared to parents, was INCREDIBLY helpful to me as an adult only child. After years of therapy, it really tied together much of what I had learned about myself and filled in some crucial gaps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally they got it - I have known this for years, based on personal experience and my studies of art.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo the authors - I would be really curious about how recent information about attachment and the brain lines up with your hypothesis. In your longer article you talk about anxiety. How is anxiety the same and different from PTSD? How is dissociation connected to your hypothesis? If both dissociation and depression are adaptive, how might they work together or not work together?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Cat: finally a compassionate and clinically sound response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression is distinct from emotions, such as sadness, precisely because A.) it occurs without reason, and B.) it is not functional. Depressive thinking is not productive -- it is limited by depressive perceptions, and locked into irrational beliefs.
The evolutionary argument that illness must have some positive adaptive purpose is itself of questionable rationality. What is the benefit of cancer, juvenile diabetes, hemophilia or any of the myriad genetic disorders that have still not been "selected out"?
Thank you Cat: finally a compassionate and clinically sound response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression is distinct from emotions, such as sadness, precisely because A.) it occurs without reason, and B.) it is not functional. Depressive thinking is not productive -- it is limited by depressive perceptions, and locked into irrational beliefs.
The evolutionary argument that illness must have some positive adaptive purpose is itself of questionable rationality. What is the benefit of cancer, juvenile diabetes, hemophilia or any of the myriad genetic disorders that have still not been "selected out"?
Thank you Cat: finally a compassionate and clinically sound response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression is distinct from emotions, such as sadness, precisely because A.) it occurs without reason, and B.) it is not functional. Depressive thinking is not productive -- it is limited by depressive perceptions, and locked into irrational beliefs.
The evolutionary argument that illness must have some positive adaptive purpose is itself of questionable rationality. What is the benefit of cancer, juvenile diabetes, hemophilia or any of the myriad genetic disorders that have still not been "selected out"?
I think the author is trying to assign a vlue for rumination when there isn't necessarily one. Rumination is a problem because it is about going over something ( a problem or perceived slight) again and again without coming to a solution. Sometimes there is no solution, Depression is not productive state. The emotional pain or exhaustion involved does not lend itself well to problem solving.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPost a link to the full article if you actually want people to read it
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that intelligence and mental illness are correlated because they both stem from independent thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRumination only works if it dovetails into an effective solution. Unfortunatly for many chronic ruminators their solution is to become professional victims. Sadly, at least in the USA, the role of professional victim has become a honored one. For example, ex-soldiers with PTSD have money and resources thrown at them for decades. Meanwhile kids trying to go to college often can't find the money for even a few years to do so due to US Govt. cut-backs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study makes sense. I've been dealing with depression for most of my short life, and it does come to me that when I am faced with a problem that will push me into depression, I tend to break it down and do a cost/benefit analysis. Though, depending on that analysis, I may slip further into depression (sometimes dangerously so) because, either unjustified or not, I'll find that the most reasonable aspect of my c/b analysis is the less appealing and most difficult to deal with. (At least, what I see as reasonable.) There was a post earlier regarding how anxiety fits into this model, and I would say, based on my own experience with depression, that coming to a conclusion you do not like after breaking everything down could contribute to the anxiety. Again, anecdotal, but when I am faced with a prospect I'm dreading, I will think on that prospect over and over again and then I end up having an anxiety attack...then my brain goes into over-drive for half an hour.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a thought, but nonetheless interesting.
ruminate verb (ruminated, ruminating) 1 intrans said of a ruminant: to chew the cud. 2 to chew over something again. 3 tr & intr to think deeply about something; to contemplate. ruminatingly adj thoughtfully. rumination noun. ruminative adj meditative; contemplative. ruminatively adverb. ruminator noun someone who ruminates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisETYMOLOGY: 16c: from Latin ruminari, ruminates to chew the cud.
Depressive withdrawal limits the opportunities for mating.....it is not survival mechanism, it is problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"One reason to suspect that depression is an adaptation, not a malfunction, comes from research into a molecule in the brain known as the 5HT1A receptor."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is little, if anything beneficial about depression. This is speculation to the extreme, not science.
This article is great for explaining depression that comes in 'bouts', but what of chronic sufferers? Depression that doesn't let up when a problem is solved would be counter to what is indicated here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis completely ignores the physical symptoms that come with depression which I would think, from an evolutionary standpoint, are just as important to study as the mental symptoms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs mentioned, it also completely ignores the co-morbid conditions esp mania and anxiety.
Lastly, they seem to make no distinction between different types of depression. Do the researchers truly think there is no discernible difference between someone who is in mourning, someone who has broken up with their SigOth and someone who just "feels like a failure"
this completely ignores the physical symptoms that come with depression which I would think, from an evolutionary standpoint, are just as important to study as the mental symptoms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs mentioned, it also completely ignores the co-morbid conditions esp mania and anxiety.
Lastly, they seem to make no distinction between different types of depression. Do the researchers truly think there is no discernible difference between someone who is in mourning, someone who has broken up with their SigOth and someone who just "feels like a failure"
stuphin60: I would tell your teenager that there are more tests of prescribed medications for safety than there are "tests" for the safety of illegal substances. The side effects of prescribed medications can also be addressed with other prescribed drugs while the side effects for marijuana go untreated
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile there may be truth to what this article entales, I think any kind of mental issue can induce stress to the point that the sufferer misses out on living and learning about many things in life all together. There growth can be stunted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll along, those who may not suffer from any type of clinical disorder can thrive, learn more, thrive some more and learn a lot more in life. I understand sufferes of mental disorders may also become talented in a multitude of ways...but I wouldn't count on mental disorders as a way to evolve and progress. Just my take.
It feels like a malfunction to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice try Rembrandt, but then how do you explain all the successful people who have serious depression, if, in your warped thinking, it only happens to beings that don't dominate? For example, Abraham Lincoln suffered from serious depression, the list of super-successful people with depression is a long one, Marlon Brando as well, one of the greatest, most dominating actors of all time
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo refine my point, rbrandt, depression is not related to whether or not someone is successful mating. Someone can be procreating and still be depressed. I think you don't understand what depression is
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is nice to see that a topic so controversial and diverse as depression is worthy of printing in such a well regarded journal. There appear to be many posters who seek to know the "whole picture" of depression, it's scientific and evolutionary basis, the social and psycho-social effects, the cognitive basis and so on. I turyly welcomed reading this article, because it is yet "another possible piece" in understanding the "jigsaw puzzell" of both evolutionary, neuro-psychiatric, and social constructivism of depression. It seems to me that there is not one true answer to this puzzell, but a myriad of understandings, complementary positions on theory, and a hegemony dominated by a top down approach to investigation and discovery. But it was a good article nevertheless. So. . . . the 5HT1a receptor has been identifed as an area of scientific interest. I say, "good on you scientists", and then go and have a little conversation with a number of eminent social anthopologists too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suffer from mild depression. I have suffered from depression for over 20 years. I live alone and I am completely estranged from all friends and family. I have very erratic sleep patterns and I spend many hours every day 'ruminating' about my depression. The authors of this article on depression somehow try to argue my depression is a GOOD thing because I can focus on my problems and then solve my problems. This argument is RIDICULOUS. The problem IS my depression...nothing else...I have been ruminating about my depression every day for over 20 years, and the depression is STILL there. Depression will NOT go away simply by 'ruminating' about being depressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks--I'll definitely check those out. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in this sort of situation (as indeed I am, among people I know).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "manual labor" solution is an old one. I think it was St. Benedict back in the 6th century who said if a monk should suffer from "acedia" (a state of inertia which we would now identify as a symptom of depression), he should be assigned to dig in the monastery garden.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis hypothesis positing depression as a pro-survival adaptation for the individual seems a bit ill informed. Though many depressed people are perhaps intensely analytical thinkers, it would be a mistake to assume that all who suffer a clinically relevant bout of depression display this cognitive style. What is more fundamental to depression than style of thinking is the propensity to experience stress with corresponding anatomical and physiological adjustments. Even mild stress, if persistent, can evoke a bout of depression (note: chronic mild stress is a means to producing animal models of depression frequently reported in the peer reviewed scientific literature), but only where underlying vulnerabilities are ever present. A pattern of intense, long-standing contemplation over relatively insoluble dilemmas provides an engine of chronic stress, to be sure. But the key to understanding depression lies in the etiology of a separate physiological/anatomical vulnerability, whatever it is born of: concomitants of early life trauma, environmental toxins, or otherwise. Conversely, without stress, the presence of said vulnerability is insufficient to produce a depressive episode. For this reason I would suggest that depression, from an evolutionary perspective, is a disease product of our living in environments that are ever increasingly complex. As the demands for social, occupational, and general survival skills escalate, so does the potential for contemplating problems of decreasing solubility. In sum, depression represents a disease state characterized by distinct anatomical and physiological underpinnings that make an individual unusually, pathologically sensitive to stress - of all kinds. Though depressives can use all the good news they can get, I'm sorry to say that it is just plain wrong to call depression not a disease, but a pro-survival adaptation for the individual. Depression is a relatively unique disease phenomenon that requires a multidisciplinary approach to understand the interplay of cognitive, physiological, and environmental components. This hypothesis of depression as a pro-survival adaptation for the individual is the product of a relatively narrow range of analysis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn depression and natural selection: the severely depressed who have not had children (usually young males) who commit suicide will not pass on their genes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't this analysis the purpose of the kind of psychotherapy where the client has free choice of material and just talks about whatever the sub-conscious brings up? The therapist may guide or aswk questions, but, over time, the client 'solves' the problem or at least comes to terms with it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression I believe takes us into what I call the womb-like place that is quiet, often floating, protective in some way. Depression is a survival mechanism that as is in the article if used to focus may be very useful. The resistence is the factor that creates the challenges. When energy flows and/or is encouraged to flow such as in categorizing with the suggested writing component a person allows for room inside to be creative, to free-up of some of the ruminations. Promoting activity by way of brain-hand-paper-eye activity of wriitng within depressed state allows the processing of information to take form and be visible. I like to think of it as allowing flow instead of encouraging stagnancy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeems to be a bit of selective citation going on here: Susan Noelen-Hoeksema has published a number of articles on how rumination *worsens* depression (while distraction helps!!!) and how this can actually spread depression through social networks. In fact, she's even published a very recent review:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19682781?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Caffeine became part of the human environment fairly recently on an evolutionary timescale. Caffeine, a psychoactive drug used by nearly everybody, alters human neurochemistry. It is physically addictive and causes withdrawal symptoms including dysphoria (depressed mood). With nearly the entire population regularly using a drug demonstrated to cause depressed mood, we should expect depressed mood to be common.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese days the Ache and !Kung have ready access to caffeine.
There are other tantalizing hints that caffeine may be the culprit behind depression. Depression is strongly associated with migraine and with female gender. Migraine is strongly associated with female gender. Caffeine withdrawal symptoms can include severe headache, and administered caffeine often effectively aborts migraine headache episodes. And because estrogen inhibits caffeine metabolism, the rate at which women metabolize caffeine greatly varies over the menstrual cycle.
These facts, taken together, suggest caffeine may be the factor underlying the strong association between depression, migraine, and female gender.
It may seem difficult to believe the cause of depression has been literally right under our noses. Yet caffeine possesses all the qualities needed. Depressionand migrainemay be the result of incomplete adaptation to caffeine.
I want to add that depression is associated with anxiety, an association perhaps due to caffeine, a potent anxiogenic (anxiety-generating) drug and demonstrated cause of dysphoria (depressed mood).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough the idea that depression is an evolutionary adaption is interesting, and may be true to an extent, it is hard to square this with the biological mechanisms of depression. Rather than being controlled by genes, many types of depression are quite clearly a biochemical malfunction. For example: in certain diseases, the immune system develops auto-immune pathologies, and makes antibodies to serotonin, which can then lead to depression. And in chronic infections, depression can also arise from raised interferon-alpha levels, which are known to affect the serotonin system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese examples seem like accidentally-instigated depressions, depresion as colateral damage, rather than a depression deliberately controlled by some genetic design as a behavioral response.
However, this does not rule out the possibility that certain forms of depression could be directly instigated as a designed behavioral repsonse as well.
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Although the idea that depression is an evolutionary adaption is interesting, and may be true to an extent, it is hard to square this with the biological mechanisms of depression. Rather than being controlled by genes, many types of depression are quite clearly a biochemical malfunction. For example: in certain diseases, the immune system develops auto-immune pathologies, and makes antibodies to serotonin, which can then lead to depression. And in chronic infections, depression can also arise from raised interferon-alpha levels, which are known to affect the serotonin system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese examples seem like accidentally-instigated depressions, depresion as colateral damage, rather than a depression deliberately controlled by some genetic design as a behavioral response.
However, this does not rule out the possibility that certain forms of depression could be directly instigated as a designed behavioral repsonse as well.
If depression is a functional dialogue of the mind, it must include the emotions in a constructive way. Our present civilization is pleasure seeking beyond most of the ones in the past, we've even invented television and horrid stimuli within the frame to the regret of many. The emotions need a reset occasionally, and depression fits the bill for this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you read what slevitt wrote haxamon? Are you to happy? Perhaps you are having trouble with understanding basic arguments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Haxemon, did you actually read what slevitt wrote or were you in a bout of laughter. Perhaps you are too happy and have difficulty with complex ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe basic point that I am sure is covered several times throughout these responses was stated directly first. Cause and effect. We are weird already just as our universe is infinitely weird. Just because we are asked to believe counter intuitive concepts in theoretical physics does not mean we have to accept them in our dimension. Simply put we are scratching at the surface of what it is to be a complex organism in our dimension. We may have watched too much television and have developed a way of thinking which allows us to see a greater whole but that is irrelevant (like "real Time" hahahah or "imaginary time" hahahhaa) to this issue. We may evolve over time as a result of increased "higher" brain activity; however, please, do not be fooled by an argument wrapped up in an Advertisement. We have been stimulate en mass and need our soma? That is what is being echoed here, yet again. I am the voice in the wilderness hear me roar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me think, I have been to rash, the mob mentality got the better of me. My argument holds but so does the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe sneaky thing about this article, which now I see most of us thankfully want to ignore is that we have already adapted in our past. Then was it when we stopped sniffing each other's buts for social order? Did thought creep in when we were looking for ways to deconstruct a social order that saw the cruelest ape ruled? Were thumbs important to our evolutionary angst? Oh, wait other animals evolved the same way? It is just so over whelming. I need a pill!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can ramble on like this forever but the point is that there is no point. The article just stirs up the pot in order to introduce 5ht1 something. In any case I am going to investigate it because secretly I am looking for a fountain of youth also. Many of us can not understand the concept of 120 and look for ways to keep young rather than accepting tried methods. All this article stimulates is a market for pills at places like GNC because there is no argument other than an age old one "What is Deppresion?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea of depression as a evolutionary trait certainly makes sense however not everything in our evolution has a discernable benefit. Isn't it potentially valid to state that humanity survived and thrived not because of our ability to become depressed but rather in spite of it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome things may have simply evolved in tandem with other more beneficial traits. It was beneficial to humans to have complex brains capable of abstract thought so we evolved with them... along with that brain came depression, anxiety, addiction etc... the combined benefit of that fantastic brain far outweighed the negatives of the mental problems that came with it. Someone said earlier in the discussion that "simple" people tend to be happier. Happier maybe, but successful?
It depends what circles one runs in. Spending too much time with people who do not want to think necessarily gives them the advantage. That is to say those of us who have to live down in the gutter suffer form slower than our normal reflex. People who otherwise seem simple become more adept than those who must live amongst them in order to survive. Thus it is easy to see, for those of us down here, why studies would have to be done to explain the simple roller coaster ride the everyday person takes as a life journey. We know we are on it which explains why we hide in Sudoku Puzzles or other acceptable pass times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, in tandem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a critical thinker (math SAT score 800) who is recovering from multiple years exposure to chemical exposure (namely; effexor), I concur with some of the observations. Specifically, I am experiencing huge difficulty in maintaining uninterrupted thought. My belief is something has been chemically overstimmulated, and is now unresponsive. The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), neurons are as likely candidate as anything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHopefully they will recover, or I will need to retrain for less stressful employment.
Any idea on how to naturally promote 5HT1A receptor fuel supply?
Yes, in Tandem. But what needs to be said is that simple people are successful in their light. Simple people can also become violent to the point of premeditation when confronted with "unhappy" ideas or thinking. Verily, verily there it more benefit to be gained from studying those who block or do not need 5hta1, like back in the day before thoughtful people were the focus of the psychiatric society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishahaha...back to the basics...does wondersfor recovery
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article fails to effectively argue what the selection pressure would be. It loosely references studies that claim depressed people make better social choices. That claim is obviously erronious since difficultly making decisions is a charactoristic of depression. It also claims 30 to 50 percent of the population meet the clinical definition for depression. I've never heard that before but if it is true then I better start buying Big Phrama stocks fast
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimply put, arguing that there is selection pressure for depression is similar to arguing that there is selection pressure for colorblindness. Anatomical variation is a simple yet powerful explanation. You can try to vail the argument by talking about 5HT1A receptor similarity to the same receptor in other mamals. So what. Just because it is similar doesn't mean it is selected for. There's lots of stuff in us that is remarkably similar to other mamals. That in and of itself does not imply usefulness.
Nonsense. Depression cannot be understood by examining the brain. Depression is an organismic response to the prospect of future unhappiness. The mind is a problem solver. Finding happiness is a problem. The mind will chew on any problem that causes unhappiness or distress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRuminating your reactions is unlocking a depression I wasn't aware of
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo now are we into another vein? Yet another problem with the Article? Are we talking clinical depression bouts of depression? The argument, the incidents, the condition, our environment still do not do justice to the whole point of the article which is selling future products. Incidentally it is possible to have almost any clinical condition temporarily. In fact the more information we sort the more likely this redundant world will cause us to experience a variety of conditions. Personally it is reliving to be able to check each new imbalance in retrospect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn regards to the evolutionary aspects of depression one needs to look no further than the much less aware, yet prone to the same disorders, animal that shares common ancestry. Higher primates, and in many cases even lower primates, share many "mental disorders" with us, which we are slowly discovering to be less of a disorder and more of an inconvenience to the extremely aware human. Depression occurs in primates when adrenaline and dopamine (excitatory chemicals) are heightened as a stress response. In concurrence, serotonin is decreased. The observed causes of difference in these chemical levels throughout a given community of apes is believed to be caused by the status of said ape. What this means is apes which stand of lesser importance to the community have higher excitatory chemical levels and lower serotonin levels. When comparing the behavior of "depressed humans" to that of apes with a lower standing in the community, the results are clear. Humans that suffer, and I use the term "suffer" very loosely, from depression have these same skewed chemical levels. It is no surprise that humans with a high social standing are more confident, calm, happy, and have the desire to mate, and humans with a lower standing in society exhibit the opposite symptoms. In conclusion I would like to point out that being extremely self-aware can burden and sometimes override natures purpose of some inherited qualities. As the article states, deep thinking of one's personal problems is a key to the evolutionary need to still obtain this chemical response, which is quite unanimous throughout the higher primates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cause of anxiety in depression is the heightened levels of excitatory chemicals (adrenaline and dopamine), which in return lowers serotonin. I'm not exactly sure what recent psychology has discovered about "depression", but the evolutionary causes are well documented in paleo-anthropological studies regarding apes. It is all relative to the status a given ape holds within a community, or in relation to humans, an individual with lower status in society is prone to higher levels of excitatory chemicals and lower levels of serotonin. This will cause every symptom from aggression to anxiety (which is the underlying cause of aggression). Humans with "leader status" are almost always calmer, more confident, less anxious, and have higher sex drive. These qualities mirror community life in the ape world. We must not forget we are animals that are inconveniently self-aware
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBravo, we are getting somewhere here. There is a group of monkeys in which the smaller males have larger genitalia and everyone has sex all the live long day. So lets not be too quick to dismiss human behavior as that of the apes even if the article compares us to rats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was diagnosed with a mild form of manic-depression (mild mania, severe depression). I think the root of my problem is in trying to solve my problems. I am no stranger to rumination, analysis, anger, frustration, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts. But, I do not feel that my 'condition' is irreversible or can only be helped with medication. In fact, I am fixing it myself. Anyone dealing with these things should read this book: The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz. It should be required reading for all mental health professionals. It should not be underestimated that our most important aspect as human beings is our drive to create. Read it, understand your life and make it what you want it to be: something to rejoice about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf only we could take interest in other people's struggle. Have you ever noticed how one book leads you to an other but you could care a less about what some one else recommends? Well that is the case for most of who seek after knowledge. There are also those who do not want you to heal yourself. Remember that book "100 Cures They don't want you to know about?" I picked it up and have since from time to time tried to imagine 10 000 different or individual medical supplies, in stead of finishing the book.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's obvious neither author and most commenters have never experienced real depression, just perhaps sadness at the death of someone they love or a broken relationship or some other big or little solvable problem that they mistook as real depression. I'm glad most of you find this topic and novel approach to looking at "depression" as fascinating at the detached, logical, academic level. I wonder, at the detached, logical, academic level, how many readers of this article who really do have actual depression will kill themselves as a result of reading this. I'm guessing two or three at least... You should collect these statistics--it could be quite fascinating (at the detached, logical, academic level).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was born with actual depression--my mother's detailed comments in my baby book through age five clearly document what we now realize was clinical depression and dysthymia. A week-old infant doesn't need quiet down time to mentally focus and solve a problem to make the depression go away. There might be a 'bright side to being blue' when you have encountered some problem you can either resolve or learn to accept, adapt, or overcome, but there is a difference between "being blue" and having full-blown severe depression and dysthymia for 39 years.
To hear the authors put forth such a hypothesis that depression is a good thing and to see that the editors of this publication chose to publish this tripe is highly offensive and irresponsible. It only fuels most people's gross misconception that "depression" is some character flaw or behavioral problem or laziness--some problem the afflicted person should be able to solve if they actually bothered to try hard enough or if only they really admitted the 'real truth' to themselves or their therapists.
The difference between the authors' apparent definition of "depression" as some solvable problem and actual severe clinical depression is like the difference between headache and migraine, drinking and drunk, functioning and broken, living and dead. If you actually have severe clinical depression, I assure you there is no problem to solve or accept, and not every episode of crying or suicide is triggered by something. There is only unrelenting living death.
Cheers to those who find this comment fascinating (at the detached, logical, academic level). I sincerely hope you never have to understand what I mean and can write me off as an aberration rather than a valid data point among many that help define the real issue, "depression," rather than bicker over use of the word "rumination."
Living dead: Your case does sound unique. But the simple fact that you are still walking around tells me that you may not be as hopeless a case as you have experienced for the last 39 years. The energy that simply allows you to stand and walk, the energy that causes you to want to take in your next meal can, if amplified, be experienced as pure joy. I would try a raw vegan diet--the zing of life may well come into your body and consciousness (if that is what you want).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear friend, who is severely clinically depressed. This series of most often unrelated response to the said article is causing me some cold amusement to be sure, but at a layman's level. I have so read response to the article which continue to open up the heart of the matter and wish to now read all of them before responding to your post. This is because I myself have known from childhood that I have some sort of condition, which now it seems will never be diagnosed because it is too intangible and completely consuming of myself. At first I wished to express that you were comparing depression and suicide to loseley as I have had on occasion the chance to know those with fibromyalgia or sever cancer; however. someone such as yourself has surly perused The Myth Of Sisyphus by Albert Camus and would be aware what may or may not drive an individual. From time to time I can be thoughtless even though I am constantly under my emotions; so therefore, it is nice to have been smarted by someone enough to read all of the responses before proceeding further. To any others, you have little chance of winning an argument with me in this forum no matter your status or vocabulary, but please try harder then what I have read so far.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne more thing before I read all of the posts. Do any of you actually know how we evolve? No? I did not think so. I guess I will have to give you a clue. It is like memory. The way we string together stuff becomes a way of leading and sorting. That is all I can give you for now. Some fool of a woman might give me a child someday and there has to be some work left for them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately evolution has placed too great a load on the primitive brain. The demands of creating rapid-fire thoughts in a complex environment is proving too much for too many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisD J Wray
http://www.atotalawareness.com
Although there is massive stimulation these days, one thing we all have varying degrees of control over is our own point of focus. What I think many of us do not realize is that whatever we put our focus on trains our brains to recognize and attend to more of, as it goes about it's job of sifting the massive amounts of input that we have always gotten, even before we were bombarded with information as we are now. What depressed people are often not aware of is their ability to choose their focus, reorganize the sifting part of their brain to sort for and attend to good FEELING stimuli and or data (of any type) as opposed to stimuli fulfilling other criteria, ie. intellectual, visual, auditory, etc. In addition, we don't recognize our freedom to release ourselves from things, circumstances, thoughts, that cause us discomfort. I guess those abilities come with self-awareness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, we are all on our own quest. The point is, if we can define the qualities of the answer we seek, we will find it/create it. The individuality of the struggles of individuals is not what is relevant--only what is common to all as human beings. And whether or not "they" don't want others to heal themselves, no one can stop you from doing it if that is what you want to do. In fact, I think we ourselves are much more interested in blocking ourselves from healing--maybe our identities are all tied up in being an intractable case of [insert label here].
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was taught by a NZ Maori elder of the Tuhoe tribe that our moods arrived with the seasons, and in winter one retreats into one's heart cave; for in the stillness of winter things crystallize. If I have faith that spring will come, and even the ice-age had it's thaw, there is nothing to fear. I wrote this up in the English family therapy magazine 'Context' several years ago. Nick Drury, psychologist. New Zealand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will bite my toung about that too great a load thing for now
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust today I wondered if the Bear thought about the sweet rest to come during hibernation, and weather the memories of hunger drove it to keep on keeping on. Yeah we were misled about a lot of stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Let's get back to the author's original question - why didn't depression weed itself out over the course of millions of years? It reduces the chances for survival and (in severe cases) causes suicide. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the world were the same as it was up until the industrial revolution, I think you could talk about depression in an evolutionary context. But, I think it is obvious to most people that with the advent of technology and the manipulation of the natural world the source of depression can be anything from a symptom of environmental pollution to an undetected food allergy, to a learned behavior, to false assumptions, to an unresolved internal conflict...etc.
If he is identifying a certain type of depression that is alleviated by writing/analysis, I think he is talking about the type that is caused by a function of the mind to strive to bring aspirations, thoughts, understanding, anything really, to completion. This is the human drive that brings meaning to our lives and that carries us through our lives. This drive is essential to our survival and fulfillment. We are creative beings, where we go wrong is when we reach to complete that impulse with a 'negative'. What if Michealangelo said, "I want something, but I don't want it to be blue and I don't want it to be clear, and I don't want it to cause people to laugh and I don't want it to be like the sky and I don't want....." We certainly would not have The Pieta! Michaelangelo reached first for the qualities that he wanted -- even if in the beginning they were vague -- and as his creation took shape he became more and more specific. This is how any successful human being operates (who is happy, that is).
When rumination works to alleviate certain types of depression, it must be because the person, especially in writing things down, allows themselves the freedom to turn negatives into positives. As a society we do not have much patience with ourselves (because society has sped up to such a degree that for many rumination is an impossible luxury. For the rest, they are just unaware of the creative process.
The field of psychology is just getting to the 'positive'. I am just glad that there are people like Robert Fritz who can actually put us on the right track.
As you can probably tell, I am not in any way scientific -- analytical yes! But I am adding my two cents in the interest of cross pollination. :)
an intractable case of self doubt mixed with a good splash of obsession with perfection to the point of psychosis for me...you are so eloquent, I imagine you move as you write, always an eloquent expression...have to make preserves tomorrow thanks for something to dream about...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What if Michealangelo said, "I want something, but I don't want it to be blue and I don't want it to be clear, and I don't want it to cause people to laugh and I don't want it to be like the sky and I don't want.....""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn a similar note, speaking of "self doubt mixed with a good splash of obsession with perfection", what if we say, " I am not" instead of "I don't want." We are speaking of ourselves in the negative, and furthermore, we could truly go on forever (I am working on my 17th year...although I think I might be starting to see the light.) But, (in my very vague knowledge of Christ) I do remember Him declaring, "I Am, that I Am." In the yogic tradition they say "I Am that I Am, and That forever."
This is the positive view of Self. We all Are. We are not negative space. We are the resonance that occurs when spirit meets matter. We are the thrill that runs through us when we focus on an object of desire. And whether we are aware of it or not there are things that we all long to see exist for the pure love -- the thrill of it and no other reason. When we discover those things we can finally shed thoughts of "I am not."
If people today are exposed to the same things artisans and the elite were exposed to in Roman times then where does that leave us in a discussion of the article in question? When I have slept I will enjoy reading your posts...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow to be completely honest I had wanted to sit at your feet and ask you, "How can I be Positive?" Now you introduce these concepts to this discussion. This is a nice distraction from the article to tell the truth, as I have already stated that the article in question has no real point-- certainly not a new one-- to make other than to be and help sell future products.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there an old Chinese saying like this, "Beware the man who says he has conquered his ego?" Have we not left our caves many times only to be pulled back into "Human Drama?" ( I Love Huckabee's) Are not the many followers of Oprah causing anxiety for, and actively undermining, those who must associate with them. To me then vigilance and practice are those things which make us more resistant to falling into what we perceive as negative patterns and enable us to more often than not remain positive.
These things are self evident in other considerations such as sport and work, yet we do not seek to apply those time honored methods to the pursuit of happiness. In a time during one of my many bouts of "slumming it," I discovered what it meant to hold a black belt in a martial art. On many occasions I have become so relaxed as to almost believe I had conquered my ego. Conversely when I am drinking obsessively I base myself and associate with scoundrels who would give all I had away for one drink. I found myself angered and imbalanced too easily. Why was that? Not because of my drinking, my drinking had come about as a result of not practicing what was "good and right" over and over again. Truly the metaphors of our great religions have armed and shielded us already yet we resist.
As far as why we do not listen to the previous generation who have often told us these things? Why should we? Everything we have done so far since the start of the industrial age has been but to cause more labour rather than save it. Given freedom of thought why would any generation want to follow their predecessors footsteps. Now we are on a crutch. We do more and more labour to ensure that more and more people can do more and more labour while consumption is the prise. It is evolution on the move when a world outfitted in AC will see over consumption final cause societal breakdown as many begin the race to be outfitted with DC or private energy sources.
We are thus left with the timeless struggle to compete with ourselves for fulfillment.
I need to think about what you have said in regards to "I am not," as what I am assuming would become a kind of mantra. The problem I mist think through first is this: is your endeavour to be positive or occupy positive spaces that of the Pician era. It may all seem funny but remember that little catch phrase self fulfilling pharmacy? Before I had decide to become Chairman of a People's movement or die in a gutter or both, I thought perhaps I could herald the coming of the second coming. Of course I myself am unable to experience feelings of a religious nature but think, metaphorically, the religions have been pretty accurate. Now the thing about the second coming was that my new Christ was going to herald the idea that we were all God. "I am in the Rocks and the trees." This is me my many facets. My fascination with theory and the kookier age of Aquarius kind of all rolled up into me an expression of nothing but everything. To most people I seem like cardboard in shades of negativity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, it is a digression from the point of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy point about the article is that yes, I agree that depression is an adaptive behavior with an important function. (My parents never got me therapy as a high school student because they said that depression has an important spiritual function.) That function being to reach into the unknown for closure to our creative longing -- in other words to put us in the right mental state for solving a pressing problem.
I also agree with the person who said they thought that possibly depression mimics an adaptive behavior but is not actually beneficial. The reason being, that it is possible to suddenly find yourself in a depressive state that cannot be solved easily with analysis. Maybe you have moved into a house with really high radon levels and only after a year is it causing a depressive state (a state that causes you to see the unwanted in everything in your life except the invisible gas that is causing you to see your life in that light). You could chew on that for a very long time without it donning on you that the source of your depressed mood is an invisible gas emanating from your basement, or mold that has formed at the base of the inside of your chimney, or blue number 1 food coloring in the dairy twirl ice cream you like so much, or that your suicidal tendencies are a result of eating wheat, which you eat every day and so never notice any contrast in your mood and behavior. What we may have had that we do not have as much of now is a slow enough life that going into a quiet state could actually yield leaps of logic that allowed us to identify ostensibly hidden threats. I think much was discovered by the intuitive mind in slower times.
Also, the reason I talk about rumination in the positive is because the author talks about rumination being effective at resolving depression for many people and many of the respondents felt that that was untrue in their own lives. I wanted to shed some light on the fact that you can ruminate in a way that attempts to eliminate the negative by exploring it further, or you can ruminate in a way that attempts to create what is desired by reaching for the qualities of the solution and slowly becoming more and more specific until the solution is manifest. One can cause a very long depression, the latter can be quicker and more effective.
As far as learning from our elders and ancestors, I think we should absolutely disregard them and live our own reckless lives until such time as it becomes a problem for ourselves personally and we suddenly want to find an alternative. Then I think we are lucky to have such wisdom to turn to. Anything and everything is potential raw material in the pursuit of the life we envision. Which, by the way, continues to change over the course of our lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I say 'positive' I do not mean be 'nice' or 'good' or 'acceptable'--what I mean is pay attention to what you like, what feels good, what you would like to see exist, what IS or COULD BE instead of what is not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a tendency to look at what we would like or what we would like to be by looking at what already exists or people who have been successful or celebrated--which is fine until we say to ourselves, I want to be like that person but that person was [fill in quality here] and I AM NOT. So I cannot have that or be that because I AM NOT what I must be to do what that person did.
For example: " I wanted 'to become Chairman of a People's movement' BUT I AM NOT a vivacious visionary.' [That is my best interpretation of a positive version of 'To most people I seem like cardboard in shades of negativity.']
For every statement, for every thought, for every feeling, for every single object of attention there exists a vision of it's opposite. Reaching for it is the beginning of it's manifestation in your life. And looking at things in that way does so much to shorten 'rumination' time.
AS A LIFE LONG SUFFERER FROM DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY,I CAN TELL YOU FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE THAT DEPRESSION IS NOT ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY ANXIETY AND VICE VERSA. HOWEVER, THEY OFTEN ARE ASSOCIATED WITH EACH OTHER AND IN MY CASE THE ANXIETY STATES THAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED ARE IN FACT A WAKE-UP CALL TO YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE DEPRESSED AND HAVE BEEN IGNORING THE SIGNS, UNTIL YOUR BRAIN SAYS ENOUGH! THEN AS YOU START TACKLING THE DEPRESSIVE ISSUES, THE FEELINGS OF ANXIETY START TO DIMINISH UNTIL A POINT THAT YOU REACH ADDRESSING THE DEPRESSION ISSUES,THAT THE MIND CAN TURN OFF THE PANIC BUTTON.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving been deeply depressed and also having an acutely analytical personality I offer the following: ruminating is simply defined as going over and over all the details of an event or problem looking for a "solution" to change the outcome, i.e., trying to decide if staying married to someone who is mentally ill is doable or even possible when one is absolutely miserable. There are so many factors to consider, not the least of which is what kind of responsibility does one have to the marital commitment, and the overwhelming emotional involvement makes the situation almost intolerable. Anyone outside the situation utters instant judgment; social pressures are intense. Bottom-line: classic depression, social withdrawal/isolation. The article does not give examples of the "problems" these depressed people were ruminating upon. I think that's the missing information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example: " I wanted 'to become Chairman of a People's movement' BUT I AM NOT a vivacious visionary.' [That is my best interpretation of a positive version of 'To most people I seem like cardboard in shades of negativity.']
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust to finish my thought (interrupted by children and such): Even though I have stated that last bit as a 'positive version', it is still an "I am not" statement, which you knew even before I restated it makes you feel inadequate -- or bad. But restating that last bit positively may give you some info that you were not aware of before -- namely, that even though it may not seem in the realm of possibility for you to be a charismatic visionary you would love for your ideas to be heard, respected, and agreed with. If it feels hopeful to read those words, or if it suddenly gives you an idea that you never had before, that is what being 'positive' is about.
But, like I said, Robert Fritz says it better. It is a great book.
I am an artist struggling with clinical depression and get bombarded with ideas. But once I grab onto an idea, I'm very focused, and break the project down to manageable tasks. If I get stuck on figuring out a portion, I go and listen to live music, tap my toe, and maybe drink a beer. It seems to help me sort out the problem. However, sometimes I am overwhelmed by the bombardment, and I can only sit and veg-out. But, when focused, I make some pretty cool art.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJSrocks - I hope the resources I suggested to you are helpful. You talk about how you feel so alone, and I hope reading other only childrens' experience gives you peace. Many talk about the agony of being the one responsible for their aging parents as you did. As an only child adult, it was the awareness of my aging parents needs that put me over the edge. I hope reading their stories gives you some comfort and helps you put words to your own experiences if that's helpful to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been wondering if you were involved in any sort of human drama which could make your positivity seem more valid to me. Children make you seem human. I have wondered often about people who live in dangerous areas but remain positive. I have a philipina friend who lives in an area where people are kidnapped and bombings are common. She seems so full of life each and every day. We certainly seem to be living in self constructed prisons here in North America. Perhaps that is one of the reasons we can become satiated by solving problems only to become more depressed as a result. Like now for instance, I am trying to honestly decide weather or not there is a chance that I have been depressed my whole life. This thing about rumination being more than a novel entitled the "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" fascinates me. I think I could shed some light on some issues there. I have previously been more interested in things and their relationship to transactional analysis, than to my own "Ruminations." Really this has made me quiet distracted and unable to function the last couple of days. My thoughts want to stray towards 5HTP, I want to express to others how much energy we are wasting trying to cure rather then prevent. I am angry at the whole system that sees our sporting venues demolished while pink ribbons adorn our compact SUV's. In any case I simply have to get out and get some fresh air. Perhaps go jogging or fishing. Then I will be able to focus and be more analytical. Really I can not be depressed, how is that possible? What does it feel like. Green is Green, that is clear, no matter what any grade 7 health teacher/ philosopher tries to tell us as children. But what about depression? In any case, if I am depressed then it was caused by my defence mechanisms, it is not the defence mechanism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJogging will help. Then I am going to read a John Donne poem entitled "Death be not proud." After that my head will be clear, I will substitute the word Death for Depression, and follow with many other words. In this it may be possible to figure out what exactly is the point of the article in question. For it seems, as John Donne gave Death life, so also are we being asked to breath life into depression.
Depression? Most of America right now is "depressed" or is that angry, due to extreme financial woes. How can a doctor tell if a person is depressed or angry?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost people I know are "depressed" right now. What is the distinction?
It is very interesting reading the article again each time. Perhaps some points are interesting. I have been wondering why "Simple" people never seem to be depressed but anger easily. Perhaps if they do not have the 5ht1a receptor they can actually become comfortably numb as has been suspected. The extent of this lack of conscious in those "simple" people may not really be known as they exhibit great skill from time to time. Offering a stimuli which angers the "simple" person may shed some light on the way we might begin to live more harmoniously with them, as in putting them in their place more completely. These "simple" people control several aspects of day to day life at present time. The very idea that a proper famous person could skip a meal in order to think, while the average family member could not, necessarily implies that "simple" people control much more of our society then is generally spoken. The only way to get through to these people might be to cause loud noises randomly but often. The problem with that is "simple" people would learn to live with it or kill someone. Then where are we left when it comes to dealing with those, who apparently do not have too many 5ht1a receptors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess I was just writing about that. It is a very interesting point you bring up really. After so much of the financial woe was accepted in the main stream media, in order that, that was the ploy for confidence, an other group took the spot light. Those people who were seemingly grateful to have lost money. It was fantastic!!! Now people could place real value on friends, family and possessions!!! What about those who are still dealing with anger issues? What is the difference? What ever we are told it is, it seems as if you happened upon this article. I want to express to you this, unless you have serious doubts about your life or have been feeling strange please stay on the outside of this issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been working on "service rigs," we fix and complete oil wells on land (solid ground most of the time). We are called "Rig Pigs" because of this. Now, as I am home again for a while, it might be nice to become a gas technician, but that is not possible because my skills are different than what is required.
The focus of this article seems to have been introduced by "Lab Rats." They put stuff in the brain and take things out as someone on a service rig would do to an oil well. A lab rat has no business doing the job of a psychologist. And further, again, just walk away from theoretical discussions of mental issues, if you can. Be a good mate and a good person, that is enough.
By the way there is no offence meat to those living outside of North America. If people seem to be somewhat lethargic and metaly ill in your country, please speak up. I guess it is time we embraced our seed over here in North America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure you can reboot the brain. Not sure it would help with depression though :).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have suffered from clinical depression my whole life. It gets worse as you get older. I think I have been treated according to every psychology doctrine out there. Nothing helped until the "Prozac Nation" arrived. Meds work for me, where nothing else has.
My family was dealt a bad hand genetically. My mother has always suffered from anxiety and depression, my father had adhd and a tendency to paranoia.
My brother and I got it all! My brother committed suicide. I have come very close on many occasions.
Yes, we are/were all highly analytical thinkers. Symptom or cause? I don't know - maybe a bit of both. Maybe these characteristics are closely linked, with some overlap in their genetic origin?
I am neither a geneticist or a psychologist; I am a survivor - because of the meds that help me to think more logically, more clearly. Clinical depression is a disaster - I can see no benefit whatever in having it, either for an individual or for society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery well put. I find that my depressive ruminations become repetitive and circular. In fact, they seem to hinder resolution exactly because they are self absorbed and not particularly creative in approach.
Slevitt, I thought exactly the same thing when I read this. I happen to be a person with a relatively high IQ. I feel that I see issues where others don't because I see the broader affects of things and am, naturally, more analytical. For example, when someone throws their garbage out of a car window, most people wouldn't bat an eye - but I consider the lack of social stigma, the environmental affects, the evolution of our society as a whole, the possible biodegradable properties of the item (I know...LOL).....so you could see how certain people may be more prone to depression. They say that ignorance is bliss...and they may be right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCertainly there has to be a better issue than litter to demonstrate what it is like to be hyper attentive. The thought of children cleaning up our trash as a community service repulses me. Perhaps that is why I will never find a woman to have a child with. I rather like litter. I think our planet must smell like "human fices" to the animals. That is because we concentrate it in order to disperse it as far as is possible. Garbage is concentrated and either causes localized contaminante or is re dispersed into the Ocean. To me litter looks just great on our town and city streets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we are looking for examples of what an analytical mind can obsess with perhaps Labour is better. I can do the work of three men working for a day, in one day myself. That is because I become one with the machines and tasks to be performed. I Take in fluids and nourishment's accordingly. I look for ways to get more work done rather than trying to get as little as is required. All of these considerations ensure that my work is done without great strain to my mental or physical faculty. Now on the other hand when I work with others productivity in general decreases to the point where, yes, I could have done what three did by myself. That is because micro managers are not generally intelligent or good problem solvers. They have trouble with abstract thought and varying situations. Breaks are regimented, too long and often are too far between. This is no joke. Every bit of it is true. The very men who believe I am "green" or "slow" just might get locked in a room and have Diesel poured in if working in an other country descised as a local. The state of things in North America is at critical point and no one is going to have the energy to deal with litter until more pressing issues are addressed.
Please if anything, do not allow "them" to get your children to pick up litter in our towns, cities and hovels.
225Commander: I was thinking the same thing! How rare it is to have such thoughtful and thought provoking comments in any internet public forum. It does seem to support the relationship between analytical thinking and depression, or at least the keen interest of those of us who have experienced depression to somehow "think our way of it." It has been quite comforting to see so many "minds" out there contemplate such similar difficult terrain: we who have experienced depression are perplexed by it, tormented by its grip, and this discussion is akin to reaffirming or asserting our power before an otherwise daunting foe. It's a reaction to the sense of powerlessness. I rather like the notion of an evolutionary advantage to the rumination of depression, and everyone's comments here have enriched the discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the article is thought provoking, in my twenty five years of treating depressed patients, every one has sought treatment because of dysfunction. Perhaps some mild forms of depression are occasionally productive as the authors suggest, but it is a profound concern that readers may avoid or postpone treatment for clinical depression which is actually physiologically harmful to the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlan Koenigsberg, M.D.
While the article is thought provoking, in my twenty five years of treating depressed patients, every one has sought treatment because of dysfunction. Perhaps some mild forms of depression are occasionally productive as the authors suggest, but it is a profound concern that readers may avoid or postpone treatment for clinical depression which is actually physiologically harmful to the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlan Koenigsberg, M.D.
I have one question: If depression is adaptive, how is suicide explained? If the suicide is sucessful than someone who is dead can no longer contribute his/her genes to the next generation. This is particularly true of young people who take their own lives and have not had opportunity to reproduce.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs someone who has actually suffered from depression, I shake my head at this "everything's for the best in this best of all possible worlds" argument. Depression has kept me from thinking about my problems, causing me to make bad decisions about my future thanks to forced inactivity and feelings of hopelessness. It was not until I was put on proper medications that I began to be able to act. This is yet another flawed circular argument put out by people who think that everything has a function. Get real: some things don't have a function, some things wreak a great deal of harm and yet thrive simply because they don't kill us off before we can breed. Depression is one of these.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThankfully most people are finding this article has more and more of a fowl taste to it. So then there are all of the other questions people have brought forth as a result of this forum. In Canada many young aboriginal people commit suicide. It is hard to not make the connection between Depression and Suicide when one considers this; yet even so, I would rather read Camus right now than Eckhart Tolle. There is a point to being morose or stoic for some of us. Weather we want to call these states of mind depression or not, quiet clearly is not a debate. A state of mind is not depression. Having said that, and if we want to risk calling depression a disease, then we also can not clearly link depression to Suicide either. There may be something to Depression it self that can cause someone to keep going. Now again these things become unclear because depression would then be a force and I do not want to be the one to suggest that there are ways to defeat depression. I know one thing from my own experience. Many people might not want to live if they became me and could remember who they had been. I choose to try and find meaning in what has been to me an unmanageable existence so far.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just thought of something horrid. What if depression became fashionable among executives. Imagine the trickle down effect. What a nightmare. Remember what it is like to have to bare with an over-person who is having their moments. What if executives ask not "Could it happen to me," but "Am I ready for for a bout of depression?" The word hermit takes on ahole new meaning while considering the ramifications of a world like this. When the underlings of the underlings start professing to be depressed, the work force will be no place to be. Just kidding. Now don't you think 5ht1a is just being introduced to us in that article?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo any of these alleged scientists live n the real world? Dd they ever try to find depression in a wild rat that after getting into that state, would not find much protection in the bosom of a sympathetic society or lab setting? Depression promotes analytical thought? Have these people spent any time with a really depressed person? One who decides jumping off a bridge is a logical enterprise? Give us a break.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no doubt that clinical depression is serious and everyday. On the other hand many of us choose to scrutinize jokes in mid sentence or exhaustively try to figure out problems. Over time these habits may effect a persons, psyche, physiology, demeanor, reputation, sleep patterns, waking life, hair pigment, hygiene, social status, and many other things. Still we are vigilant and will not be foolish happy people no matter what pressure that might alleviate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the back of our heads is always the "what if?" Being enguard is exhaustive. Bing exhausted makes it impossible to prepare for the "What if?" That is in the back of the head too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an article couching its useless psycho babble in biological and anatomical clothes..It is the usual therapeutic balderdash that has yet to help a single patient on its own. I know many a person with severe depression who was advised not to take anti depressives as they were, ha ha...a way that men control women. Hmm....right. When social politics get n the way of medicine it is time to speak out. So, these sad and depressed people live day to day unable to work, think or make changes to their lives and they pay and pay their therapist who has no reason other than an ethical one to make their patients well with proper MEDICAL help which they are not allowed to so since they are NOT medical people. Those that are depressed need to go to their family doctor and if that person cannot help, go thee to one that will. There is a way out of depressive states and it is a medical and prescriptive way. You can talk till you are blue in the face but without being able to hear and think clearly change will not come much of the time. It has been established that one needs both medical prescription drugs and counseling to get the best results. Just because it may very well be an evolutionary trick of the mind to be depressed, that does not make it the best evolutionary direction for humans to have taken. After all we have lots of dead ends in our development such as birthmarks and moles..who needs them? Who needs depression? Who needs making one's hands into fists and punching out someone who annoys? We are what we are, however, but humans are also capable of invention and anti depressives help many. I know of more than one person who told me without them, they would be dead today. I suggest modestly that suicide is not an evolutionary advantage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an article couching its useless psycho babble in biological and anatomical clothes..It is the usual therapeutic balderdash that has yet to help a single patient on its own. I know many a person with severe depression who was advised not to take anti depressives as they were, ha ha...a way that men control women. Hmm....right. When social politics get n the way of medicine it is time to speak out. So, these sad and depressed people live day to day unable to work, think or make changes to their lives and they pay and pay their therapist who has no reason other than an ethical one to make their patients well with proper MEDICAL help which they are not allowed to so since they are NOT medical people. Those that are depressed need to go to their family doctor and if that person cannot help, go thee to one that will. There is a way out of depressive states and it is a medical and prescriptive way. You can talk till you are blue in the face but without being able to hear and think clearly change will not come much of the time. It has been established that one needs both medical prescription drugs and counseling to get the best results. Just because it may very well be an evolutionary trick of the mind to be depressed, that does not make it the best evolutionary direction for humans to have taken. After all we have lots of dead ends in our development such as birthmarks and moles..who needs them? Who needs depression? Who needs making one's hands into fists and punching out someone who annoys? We are what we are, however, but humans are also capable of invention and anti depressives help many. I know of more than one person who told me without them, they would be dead today. I suggest modestly that suicide is not an evolutionary advantage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is targeted at those who want to stay young and healthful. On the outside we pretend to discuss mental health issues, while on the inside we plan to follow the progress of 5ht1a sauce. There is no plan in place, not trend, or reason to worry, that anything would cause our medication supply to dry up. It would not be nice to just announce a new line of antidepressants or health store elixirs. These things have to be done more delicately. The article was are responding to would be better suited to the National Enquirer yes, but then the right people would not be targeted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article targets those who want to stay young and healthful. Externally we discuss mental health issues, while internally we plan to follow the progress of 5ht1a sauce. There is no plan or trend, no reason to worry, that anything would cause our supply of medication, or health store elixirs, to dry up. This article might be more suited to the National Inquirer, but then the right people would not be exposed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat, Who, Where and When using GoPubMed: all Pubmed publications about 5HT1A receptor http://www.gopubmed.com/search?q=5HT1A receptor
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the author presents some compelling points, worth, perhaps, ruminating over. I don't suffer from straight up depression, rather I've been diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder which results in some crippling depressions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with many of the comments that when I am in the very depths of despair I am not thinking in the most logical or rational manner, but there is something about the withdrawal that I find therapeutic. I do get down, feeling like life is not worth it although I stop short of suicidal fantasies, thankfully and I guess I have been dealing with this for long enough that I feel that my analytical brain still directs me to asking, ruminating over, some of the big questions about life, relationships etc.
I do experience moments of numbness and a sense of 'freezing up' but I feel they are in response to events that initially seem overwhelming to me, a time of retreat.
When I was first diagnosed with depression ten years ago (i received the Bipolar II diagnosis 4 yrs ago) I was indeed incapacitated and CBT did initially help me move past the paralysis. the thing is, I quickly found myself "out thinking" the cognitive behavioral responses to my negative thought patterns, something my current Dr has actually seen quite a bit with his patients. An interesting aside that may or may not be relevant is that many of his patients are considered "highly functioning" by societal standards, debilitating psychological conditions notwithstanding.
The most useful approach for me has been the external ruminations within the therapeutic relationship, where I think aloud, doing most of the work/talking myself, and with my Dr intervening to point out distortions or suggest another way of looking at things. CBT techniques did help initially, but in terms of addressing the full depth and range of my symptoms, it just was not satisfactory.
Brains are complex, society kind of messes things up and environmental factors can trigger genetic predispositions so solid answers may be hard to come by. But I certainly wouldn't underestimate the impact of our culture's mistrust of 'sadness' or 'melancholia,' and our obsession with the state of 'happy,' one frequently attained by artificial and superficial means, which gloss over or deny a full range of human emotion and experience. we mistrust sadness and convince ourselves that we can either buy or will happiness. we're not all shiny happy people and that's okay.
Just one person's experience, for what it is worth
Author: One problem with using clinical judgment to make a point is: Whose clinical judgment should be used? Clinicians do not present a unified position on the issue of whether depression has any useful cognitive effects. Many prominent clinicians and researchers (Neil Jacobson, Kay Redfield Jamison, Emmy Gut) have suggested that it does have useful effects, and the issue is commonly debated in the therapeutic trenches. Indeed, one of us (Andy Thomson) is primarily a clinician with a continuous, full-time out-patient psychiatric practice for the last 30 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClinical judgment is often difficult to evaluate objectively. However, in domains where it is possible to evaluate it objectively, it is often wrong, and experience is no predictor of being right (see Studying the Clinician , by Howard Garb, published by the American Psychological Association).
Even if clinicians did present a unified position, clinical judgment is not a good substitute for the rigor of scientific research. For decades, the clinical judgment was that peptic ulcers were stress-related. But scientific evidence, recently recognized by a Nobel Prize in Medicine, established the role of Helicobacter pylori as the principle causative agent. Clinicians resisted this evidence for a long time.
To evaluate the science behind our arguments, you really need to read our paper in Psychological Review. As Ive said before in a prior post, our Mind Matters piece was intended to give interested readers an idea of an argument that we present at greater length in that article. We intended our Mind Matters piece to be provocative. But if you are going to rely solely on the Mind Matters piece to evaluate the science of our arguments, then surely you will come away feeling disappointed. The prevailing view among clinicians and researchers is that most episodes of depression that meet DSM criteria are indeed instances of disorder. It simply is not possible to address all the possible issues that are likely to arise when questioning the prevailing view. However, we do address them in much greater detail in that paper. Incidentally, Psychological Review is a pretty good journal, and its kind of hard to get published there. Maybe readers should take a look at the paper before dismissing it altogether.
Finally, others have argued that depression, as a disorder, is overdiagnosed by current DSM criteria (see The Loss of Sadness , by Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield, Oxford University Press).
No one, and I mean absolutely no one who ever decided to jump off a bridge thought it was logical enterprise! Desperate yes, but not logical! The deeper the depression the less and less logical a person will be. That is why it is a sickness and not just a symptom.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe serious discussion begins with observing (assuming ?) that in depression people use analytical style of thought and that they break down large complex problem into smaller components and consider them one by one.
Is this observation (assumption ?) right? Some say that the depressed people imagine their small problems to be very big and a change in perspective is required to cure them.
Also, we see that animals too get depressed. How much analytical powers do they have?
If it's true that depression permits us to solve complex emotional problems, this puts the whole idea of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) being the preferred psychotherapeutic treatment for depression into question. CBT proposes that depression is the result of faulty cognitive patterns that must and can be corrected. The psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach seems much more in tune with this research. There the central idea is to give the patient's ruminations space to be heard and to let the patient discover the meaning of those ruminations. In my opinion, the CBT approach is favored because it is a trivial exercise to design good double-blind research protocols for CBT, while psychodynamic protocols are very tricky and elusive to design. When it has been successfully designed, research on psychodynamic protocols have shown close to equal results as for CBT in the short term, and better results in the long term. CBT is also favored by insurance companies because it is less intensive and therefore cheaper. If it is in contradiction to basic research on the nature of depression, its status as "evidence based" should be re-examined.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression makes plenty of sense, especially from an evolutionary standpoint. If I encounter a problem, social or otherwise, that will withhold my success unless I solve it, I expect to be in a different mood to force all my efforts into fixing the problem. Depression can lead to bad things, but only if the environment your living in is non-conductive to change
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(I.E. you are content, subconsciously or otherwise, with sitting and listening to heavy metal music promoting emotional responses and reveling in negative thought processes. When nothing changes it can reach a point with your psyche where you either adapt and live with the depression or become self destructive).
If your environment is conductive to change, then you should change whatever aspect of your life you can to free yourself of depression, such as a student isolating him/herself from friends family and all manner of self-indulgence to intensify their studies to become adequately educated.
I wonder If we could classify depression into more than one general category...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAuthor: Well put. In our Psychological Review article, we discuss the issue of CBT's efficacy in more detail. There are lots of experiments showing that CBT is an effective therapy for depression. However, this by itself does not mean that the attempt to change depressive thinking is itself therapeutic because CBT is a heterogeneous therapy, composed by multiple components. Attempting to change the way depressed people think about their problems is only one of these components, so it is in principle possible that this component is not therapeutic while other components are. Indeed, a study by the late Neil Jacobson decomposed CBT and found no evidence that the attempt to change the way depressed people think was therapeutic. Rather, he found evidence that a different component, called behavioral activation (which attempts to keep the depressed person engaged in their social environment) was the therapeutic component. And another study by Castonguay found that the more the CBT therapist sticks to the attempt to change depressive cognition, the worse the outcome.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a similar vein, people who report trying to cope with their depression by using various strategies to disrupt their ruminations (alcohol, distraction, thought suppression) tend to have longer, not shorter, episodes.
Finally, new talking therapies for depression are increasingly taking the reverse strategy and are not trying to fight depressive cognition. Some therapies focus on acceptance of the depressive process, while others actually encourage depressive rumination by having people write about their strongest thoughts and feelings related to their depression. These therapies are proving to be effective in treating depression.
Thanks for your comment.
Author: For those who are interested in the neurobiological details of depression, one of the things that we discuss in our Psychological Review paper, but did not discuss in the Mind Matters piece, is the widely held belief that depression is a brain state of low serotonin and antidepressant medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) work by increasing the level of serotonin in the brain. In fact, scientists don't really know why SSRIs reduce depressive symptoms because they have several modes of action. Based on our review of the literature, we argue that there are greater reasons to believe the opposite--that depression is actually a state of 'high' serotonin and that SSRIs work by decreasing serotonin levels. A new study published August 27th in PloS ONE supports our prediction. It shows that chronic administration of the SSRI citalopram to mice reduces serotonin levels in the forebrain ( Honig G, Jongsma ME, van der Hart MCG, Tecott LH, 2009 Chronic Citalopram Administration Causes a Sustained Suppression of Serotonin Synthesis in the Mouse Forebrain. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6797. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006797 ). Of course, mice are not people, but getting to test this in people will take some time because of the practical issues involved. However, given the fact that the mammalian brain is highly conserved, it would be very odd if SSRIs had completely different modes of action in humans and mice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow...silence for two days...thank you for the many posts...I hope the rest of us are not scampering off like naughty children or grumbling psychiatric patients ... perhaps people were checking out posts before commenting...even if new replies seemed unrehearsed ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think the author assumes that at all. I think the whole POINT of this article is that depression is an attempt by your mind to help you figure out what the problem is by forcing you to slow down and ruminate. Unfortunately, in our society we aren't big on slowing down. We're big on constantly working and constantly moving and never resting. We resist what our brain is trying to do, so we aren't receptive to it, and depression ends up being a problem instead of a means to a solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI realize I'm simplifying it here, but I have experienced depression and all sorts of different ways to treat it, and came to the conclusion on my own years ago that it didn't need treating, and neither did I. I needed to slow down and take time to listen to my mind and body. I know that doesn't pay the bills, but we do have services in place that could help people in those situations... if they wanted real help, not just a pill to make intense emotions "magically" go away.
This is a response to Dr. Alan Koenigsberg's comment of 9/2/09 05:27 p.m.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been treating primarily depressed patients for thirty five years. Like Dr. K I'd be concerned if patients delayed treatment because of Paul Andrews and my paper or our brief summary in Scientific American. Our hope is that this formulation of depression will lead to more effective treatment.
The ideas have been invaluable to my clinical work. Prolonged fever can do damage. Prolonged physical pain can inflict costs. But, they are adaptations. Yes, prolonged depression has costs, but we think the evidence shows adaptive design.
If we can intervene with greater effectiveness early, then perhaps severity can be reduced. Recently I had a case of a severe, agitated depression in a previously healthy professional. There were multiple complex social problems at his work and in his personal life. For a variety of reasons, he was avoiding a sustained analysis of them. His treatment focused on the barriers to full intellectual engagement of his troubles, and it brought him considerable improvement. This is just one of many cases our model has helped.
Perhaps if Dr. K might look over even his severe cases, he'd find the core contains complex social problems and failure to solve them as the driver of thedepressions and the severity.
Thanks to Dr. K and everyone else for their interest and omments.
J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D.
Something has been bothering me about this article for a few days. I have been unable to "get into" figuring how far back and what adaptations have been left over, somewhere between the primordial pool and now, that would lead anyone to believe that depression, which is possibly subject to subjective criteria, is an evolutionary remnant. Now I can start to to some reading in my spare time concerning this matter as I have figured out what little matter has been nagging at me. Besides being a nut job myself, someone who has found a way back into psychosis every time I sober up long enough to be diagnosed, my Father has not had a Pituitary gland since 1986. A surgery to remove a benign tumor was successful in saving his optical nerve but not his pituitary. In the tween years my father has also had a few stokes. The problem is this, a few weeks ago our family Dr. prescribed my father medication for depression. The fact my father is alive speaks highly of my father's DR. because of the cocktail of hormones and medications my father has depended on since 1986, but isn't depression a neurobiological condition and what drugs could be prescribed for someone that has not had a pituitary gland for over twenty years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't get it. The fact that a chemical receptor is highly preserved doesn't mean that its malfunction is adaptive somehow. It is like saying that since lots of animals have legs, broken legs must be useful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the question of whether or not depression is an evolutionarily adaptive trait is answerable empirically, is it not? Just look at whether or not depressed people have more children than non-depressed (in a variety of cultures and settings.) If they do, then depression is conferring some kind of evolutionary benefit, and we have to figure out what that benefit is (some people have reasoned that depressive behaviors might be adaptive in times of famine or epidemic, when hunkering down and avoiding social contact might be a survival tactic.) If they don't have more children, then there is no evolutionary benefit, ipso facto, and depression really is a debilitating illness, as we all know it is.
So do they?
And further, if depression helps you analyze complex social problems better (and leaving aside the issue of how that ability would translate to better reproductive success, which is necessary for a trait to be selected for by evolution), what does it mean when you are depressed in the absence of any complex social problems? Is the idea that you will then help solve OTHER people's problems, the very people you are avoiding (and somehow having more children thereby)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the authors mean that the ABILITY to feel sad or to ruminate, to the proper degree and in response to the proper situations, is adaptive and preserved by evolution. In that case, no argument here. Of course, then you have handily excluded depression-as-an-illness from the discussion.
Anyway, how heritable is depression? Is it more heritable than, say, homosexuality (another trait that would seem at first glance to be counter-adaptive.) Doesn't an evolutionary argument for depression have to start with that?
This is not even evolutionary psych. This argument is ordinary evolution: genes (waves hands) directly translate into behavior and feelings which (are clearly maladaptive, but lets ignore that) are possibly adaptive in some narrow setting (okay, there are studies), which (waves hands) then translate into greater reproductive success, thereby ensuring the preservation of the responsible genes.
Huh?
Famine, considering that cameras will not and have not always been there, is an interesting scenario in relation to "Depression's" evolutionary roots. Here it must be said that we are discussing famine such as the ones in Egypt before the common era or otherwise famine on a global scale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFamine certainly goes along with that old theme in urban lore, "Anyone who goes outside of a narrow bandwidth is considered crazy." Our society funnels us into certain ways of being that necessarily would suggest that receptor levels would be similar among the greast numbers of us. If in famine certain of us ruminate and certain among us cannibalize, then the group that ruminates, we are saying protects their children and is led by their over itch (yes itch I am sure not to be the first simpleton to say "Das Itch") to maintain Societal values. The question then becomes, how does the 5hT1a receptor play out in this and what possible other traits may cause ruminations?
Could there be an "inverted-U" like relationship between 5-HT levels and cognition, where by too much or too little is deterimental to both mood as well as cognitive function. Have any studies examined this? In addition, baseline levels of 5-HT as orchestrated by genetic, epigenetic and enviromental conditions would have a large influence on cognitive function observed in depressed patients.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the magazine should change it's name to Pseudo-Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway just kidding about the Famine reply...evolution does not inherently have to do with a species...there is a stronger drive than reproduction and that is self preservation...humans have a way of mixing all that up some animals would die to reproduce...I should just read the Authors works and try to figure out what the root of this thing is...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot many people call Theoretical Physics Pseudo-Science. As for myself I feel the idea of "Time" is completely irrelevant to what is now called the "Singularity" debate. To me these things must start from one question, " How long are ya' here for?." The answer being "Forever" then leads all other hypotheses. I do not call Theoretical Physics Pseudo-Science because I understand how difficult actually understanding the math must be, it is the same here. The authors have a great deal of experience and I am simply wondering weather we can state exactly what is being presented in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa ruminant is an animal that chews the cud. "ruminating" and "chewing the cud" mean exactly the same thing in all usages.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWere you able to add two and two yet?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me state again, that evolution is not to be capitalized in and of itself. There is no metaphysical Bord of Evolutionary determinism. I can not fully understand how memories or proteins are strung together but somewhere unbeaten is the basic way life evolves. There is no good or bad until we shift to our perspective on consciousness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be fascinating to learn that severe depression was a physiological response to ADD. If ADD makes it hard to focus, and depression is a focusing mechanism... this sounds similar to bipolar disorder as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suppose if depression is an adaptation and is presumed to confer a survival benefit, insurance companies won't have to pay for treatment any more.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hope the authors of this article meant to say that some characteristic common to several organisms evolved along with all of these organisms and that that characteristic contributes to Depression? If not I am rather embarrassed with myself for having spent so much time considering this article. The authors have mentioned an other journal which features some more of their argument. If, I would ever get around to reading it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe very notion that solving complex problems relives our depression or, is possible because of depression, debunks this whole argument (I will change my mind later). Most humans are capable of learning and building upon that knowledge. If solving problems like a captive chimp offers us some sort of relief from depression then that it is similar to the effect of a narcotic. It is a sign of the sickness endemic in our age, that anyone could be confident in the thought that some people are better able to deal with redundancy and white noise. We are simply bored for the most part and find relief in little puzzles and comedies. Anyone suggesting that a metro sexual is superior is a fool. Every troupe of cliques carries knowledge in their expressions. Expressions that give meaning to others virgining observations. To suggest that the childish structure of the digital age is too much for many of us suggests that insanity is more prevalent than depression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, I am satisfied as to be able to read further into the authors study. A person who wrote English as a second language used the word "verdure" to comment on a photo of mine. Upon looking for definitions of this word, a WFO's early summation of health popped up on my computer screen (Who knows what the WHO has been pressured into adopting as a definition for health these days). Verdure is not just an absence of disease it is a complete state of well being.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can now know, rather confidently, that the 5HT1A receptor plays out more like a narcotic in our brains than an evolutionary tool. The way evolution is being spoken of in this forum is laughable to me, but at least now I can read on towards the authors' findings and advancements in their field of psychology. .
By clicking on Article in this article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be interesting to make and analogy between humans and machines with cooling systems in this case. Let us suppose that humans are "Smart Cars," it is then possible to avoid any questions arising from insights into evolutions ultimate meaning.
A "Smart car" with an imbalance in it's cooling system would indicate this. Various environments and solutions would effect the "Smart Car." If this "Smart Car" were then conscious it could even go so far as to manipulate a situation, in order to do harm to symbiotic organisms. Any disruption to the "Smart Car's" complete well being would effect it's cooling system and cause a conscious "Smart Car" ruminations.
It is so clear to me now that the majority of us need to see dietitians and professional trainers, as in a closed system like found in a movie called, "The Island." Only if we take this leap can we begin to address what is to be done about those who are in need of medical attention, rather than keeping on with our insane position that we must all become ill in order that no one falls through the cracks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne more Article to read by the Authors'.
One can imagine an ancestor sitting in cave,a million years ago,very depressed,very hungery,thinking very hard about better and easier ways of obtaining food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI began reading this with hope that I would learn something useful or at least interesting about depression. Long before the end, I was thinking, "What utter crap." What kind of depression were these people studying? There's plenty of rumination and analysis during depression, all right, but one's thoughts go in circles and one gets nowhere. Truly depressed people feel too low to write anything down. In fact, depression is rather paralytic. The question is vital: who were these people studying and under what circumstances?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn answer to rshoff : It seems your condition is fairly transparent. Your dopamine receptor is malfunctioning. You enjoy busyness which stimulates that receptor. Tis releases dopamine which results in feeling good .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said that "making you move is a whole separate issue". It would be helpful to persue this with a professional educational psychologist or or or you could get diagnosed somewhere for free.
by now you are no doubt aware that you are ADHD and can change your life dramatically for the positive by taking Ritalin or better Dexedrine...
I've been frank because I won't be writing again....talk to your Dr and get a referral or maybe your Dr. will treat you without a diagnosis....
I am a mental health professional. Make the leap!
I agree with Cat of Ulthar that depressed thinking is often skewed in a negative way, particularly in severe depression, and this whilst prodding the person to concentrate on their problems would not necessarily make their analysis very well balanced. As someone who has suffered depression for many years due to abuse at an early age whilst I have tended to analyse I have often thought negatively about myself and then analyse situations etc for all the things that point to myself being at fault, and will not be able to look at things more objectively, and often my partner will be able to see a more balanced viewpoint when I am stuck on thinking negative things. So I disagree somewhat with what the author thought about resolving social dilemas. I can imagine that the woman he mentioned, if severely depressed may have a negative image of herself and assume that her husband's unfaithfulness was her fault for example, or think something else negative, and perhaps concentrate on all the things she thought she had done wrong for example which may not be a balanced view and she would not be in a place to make a good decision. My brother, a doctor also agrees that depression often skews your reasoning, and you often can't think clearly and reasonably and I wonder if this is particularly when depression is caused by damaged emotions? I think the author is right about the positivity of expressing your thoughts especially with someone such as a counsellor who can provide balance and question your assumptions, particularly as the depression could be due to supression of damaged emotions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReading what the author himself said in response to the comments was very interesting, particularly that depression can help to deal with complex problems, and I wonder if although , as I know from my own experience, being depressed can mean thinking in a negatively skewed way, perhaps this isn't due to the depression itself , but because underneath the depression there are negatively skewed beliefs . I know that sometimes depression has lead me to obcess with certain thoughts on a negative level but maybe that's just telling me that this is because what I feel underneath are negative assumptions about myself or others. I think when something is traumatic depression can help you cope. From having depression caused from early emotional damage, you can't deal with it in one stage and all those negative thoughts get put under the surface, and the depression just seems to be a reminder of how much long term pain is there. In some ways it feels like a cloak that is keeping some of my emotions safer although feeling miserable, but at least able to take some positive steps a bit at a time. I think the danger has been when there has been too much negativity and not the balance that counselling has provided, and I think it's good to think of the emotionally caused depression as something you work with, and the minds form of dealing with emotions that are very painful and complex .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's an interesting theory, but disturbing. I agree with other comments that have expressed that the correlation between "drepressive" and "analytic" is reversed. One need only look at the history of great 19th and 20th century mathematicians and physicists to find an amply interesting cohort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost disturbing of all to me, is that from reading this article, it is clear to me that neither author understands either clinically, or from first-hand experience, the spectrum of the serious symptoms of major depression that are life-threatening and result in preventable suicides, and are treatable current and new generation drugs and sometimes other therapies.
They have never experienced endless looping, anxious thoughts, nor the inability to rise out of a bed for more than a few minutes at a time for days on end, inability to sleep, or endless sleep, nor psychotic depression where your reality is so distorted, your "problem solving" could have no survival value whatsoever. They have not experienced the rate of weight loss of major depression that exceeds the rate of weight loss of a starvation diet (someone should study this scientifically - it's happened to me twice - best Hollywood diet you could sell).
That at least one of the authors treats patients and puts forth a hypothesis without data, well, I'll stick at least to M.D. witch doctors..
And how is this linked to post-mortem depression? Is it the stressful atmosphere of a hospital? Or...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat bout the question on post-mortem depression? How would this question fit into this article?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPPPChairman,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe domino affect.
As someone who suffers from Chronic Severe Depression and Anxiety, I do not find anything in this article that resonates with what I have experienced. Before I became stable through the use of talk therapy and medication, my depression rendered me completely unable to function. I couldn't eat, sleep, drive, work, etc without thinking about putting my head through a window. The pain was so intense that rumination was not even possible. Once I started to take medication, then I could finally start to "ruminate" but without the assistance of the psychologist to help me work through my issues, I would have spent years "ruminating", not terribly productive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can see that there may be an evolutionary imperative for mild depression as a problem solving state of being, but I can't see how this fits with severe depression based on what I have described above. Interesting research though and I hope it continues. Anything that leads to new medications that don't have so many side effects would be wonderful.
As an analyst by trade, who suffers from severe depressive episodes, the only connection between work and depression I see is overload. During a depression episode, I loose my ablity to focus, and thinking becomes nausiating. This results in me taking a couple sick days to stay home alone and not think. Depression does not ultimately help my work, personal, or social life. On the contrary, it is a huge hinderance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is very important about this study is it's subjects. This study deals with a select few who are out side of the normal social order,in the same way that alpha humans are. In between are those who accept stress or become catatonic,and others who are hapless and cause the majority of us our stress. The hapless clowns,who rise to each occasion whole heatedly knowing nothing could be wrong with their way of being,cause some of us a different kind of stress than the average peon. Many of us are not stressed because an over clown slights us, we are stressed because we understand just how deep an impact a clown's dominance has on everything from the environment, to the quality of the food available, and to the equal distribution of niceties. There is no question as to the fact that the few are happy because they think we are unhappy. The human race's very survival depends on rooting out the hapless happy people, who insedently like to bare their teeth more than smile. It is not so that equality reaks of morbidness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe lack of willingness on readers to discuss hierarchy had caused me to waste a lot of brain power on this issue rather than just going on to read the author's other papers. Tonight on PBS something I had suspected was confirmed to me. Indeed a lot of what I was considering is covered in a show entitled "Killer Stress: A National Geograpic Special." I am seldom wrong in my instincts or intuition. My intuition says that time is irrelevant and some day you will know the truth of that, even if it is unfashionable to think that now. My intuitions tell me egg yolks are not bad for you and you will know that is true also. One of the posts here mentioned that Peptic Ulcers had been caused by a bacteria and that we could not simply dismiss new findings because they went against what was previously thought. Now, immediately I saw the error in that reasoning and surmised that stress caused the bacteria to cause the Ulcers, or something like that. Well it turns out stress lowers our immune response which allows the bacteria to multiply, two thirds of us have that bacteria in us. I am very seldom wrong when it comes to my gut. This study is important. Anything that tries to get at how thoughtful people can learn to not only cope but reach higher is good for humanity. There is nothing good to come for thoughtful people, even if we manage to do something grand, we can not stop looking at those who need help. Again as for those who have chronic conditions, there is nothing wrong with investigating acute depression.
Please help me with your insight. I do not know which comment you commented on. As for other depressions, that matter would seem to be more complecated than the many contributing causes of cancer becuase we are depressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is good but i need some more answers about why we act the way that we do
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean to ask about the Domino effect you mentioned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany questions can be answered when we first discover that we only have an opportunity to stop our arm from moving. Follow the patterns. On a personal note, please do not dismiss the concept of the id, ego and over id, simply because of Freud. I like to call them the itch, the ego, and the over itch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmmm, so where does the physiology of depression enter in? I do not think negative thoughts or over analyze things. My Major depression feels very physical in nature. I do not ruminate as described in the article. Mine appears to be clearly biological in nature. Very hard to treat at this point. I am a very creative person, always have been both before the MDD and now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs depresson the same as depression in manic-depression? If so, it is the opposite of mania, a time when confidence is lost and tasks become too difficult to perform. I think that the symptoms of clinical depression and the depression phase of bipolar disorder are similar but have different mechanisms. I doubt that depression has benefits as the authors maintain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, depression seems to be the evolutionary price we super-savvy Chimps have had to pay for our thinking excesses! Just like the bourse, our mood spectrum must be allowed to swing from bullish to bearish. But for me, raw food intake appears to do the trick when I feel "down in the mouth"; try munching on a stick of fresh celery for serotonin uptake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes we need to change our diets but the truth is our brains can handle much more stimulation than it is getting right now. We are so far behind in understanding the dynamics of the brain it is unbelivable. For instance, if our brains are tired it is because we are trying to block out the redundncies. There is nothing productive in listening to a highway at night. I have heard of an initative in Montreal, Canada which seeks to drown out white noice with music of the same volume. We are running much more on automatic then is now understood, that one thing, being aware gives our automatic drive it's direction. If we are feeling bad it is because we are not reciving any usefull direction in our pattern intake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have had bipolar disorder since I was 22 in 1958, right after graduating from Cornell. Mania prevented me from starting medical school with my fellow successful applicants. Most recently I have had severe bouts of depression between manic episodes after stopping lithium therapy because of kidney damage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression as part of bipolar disorder is certainly no advantage in coping with the environment or in any was favored by evolution ... a far as I am concerned.
Depression was part of the lives of Lincoln and Churchill. Churchill called it his "black dog". Lincoln undoubtedly coped with drpressio in himself and his wife during his presidency. I know of no sufferer from drpression who considers it a benefit. To say it is favored by evolution seems foolharty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs an underdog it is hard to imagine what it would be like without some sort of mental disorder to see me through the onset of old age. Only those who knew me well will remember that I was a super human. By continually having to pull punches in order to coexist peacefully with others eventually an underdog wastes away. The constant symptoms of depression have allowed me to never lose hope as some new insight always arises out of my "downs." I have no diagnosable condition but there is that way of being able to adapt and cope. It is possible that some trait has been left over that allows us to be self aware of a problem, through depression, unfortunately or fortunately the response is simply to regulate the depression with little checks and balances.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAuthor: Since some people appear to be continuing to read this piece and track the comments, I thought I would mention a few things. Jerry Coyne, a biologist at the University of Chicago, has recently criticized our work. You can find his first post here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/is-depression-an-evolutionary-adaptation-part-1/
A colleague, Ed Hagen, was inspired by Coyne's comments to start his own blog, "Dr. Pangloss", and he has written an excellent series of posts rebutting Coyne's comments. You can read his first post here:
http://edwardhagen.blogspot.com/2009/09/jerry-coyne-fud-part-i_25.html#more
"There's plenty of rumination and analysis during depression, all right, but one's thoughts go in circles and one gets nowhere."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an important point. I am an analytic person (a professional biological scientist) and I have suffered from depression. I can attest to the fact that my ruminative thoughts were almost exclusively focused on things I could do nothing about. A simplification of what the authors suggest is that depression enables people to just think really hard about their problem so they can solve it. But often there is no concrete problem, and even when there is, it often lacks a solution.
In addition, I find it nearly impossible to consider some of the other (non-ruminative) symptoms of depression to be adaptive in any way. Suicide ideation/attempts, sleep disturbances, appetite/weight disturbances...these do not help you solve problems. During depressive episodes I have been so weak from not being able to eat that I could barely walk a flight of stairs, and my inability to sleep certainly didn't benefit my ability to think analytically.
I see no reflection of my experience with depression in what the authors write. It feels like little more than psychobabble. I have benefited immensely from psychological and pharmacological treatments, but this particular theory is very troubling to me.
It is easy to fall into the trap of personifying depression. I am becoming very troubled with the idea that we are being led to believe that the human mind is not designed to understand a "singularity," or even sub atomic particles. As a simple worker, I stress over and over again to people that Time is irrelevant. Only when we take down those barriers one by one can we begin to understand another reality. Imagine what several million people living with more artistic styles of architecture could contribute to the understanding of different dimensions. It is the same in this case. Ever since it became clear that we were only conscious after the matter, it has become difficult to advance observational psychology. If we start to take a serious look at hair brained ideas put forth by professionals, we may be able to more fully understand cognition. What is Depression? It is clear we experience imbalances. Is there someone willing to step forward and say that they are depressed for every moment they are conscious, or can we try to explore as many avenues of consciousness as we can?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks: "...Well, it’s questionable whether depression is rodents is the same thing as depression in humans, ..."love this Freudian Slip by your critic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis comment to your critic seems about the best there is:Blake Stacey
Posted August 29, 2009 at 6:16 pm | Permalink
Here I mean “adaptation” in the evolutionary sense: a mental disorder is a module of neurons selected as a unit because the behavior it produces causes its carriers to leave more genes than do individuals lacking the “disorder”.
“Modularity” is another thing which makes me wary of evo-psych. As somebody who actually does research on network modularity, I can tell you, it ain’t simple. Even when your system is just a heap of nodes connected by lines — glossing over all the biological complexity of neurons — defining what one means by “modules” and partitioning a network into them is not a trivial problem. Add to this the complexity of the genotype-phenotype map and the relation between neural structures and behaviours. . . well.
Can't wait to read the blog by the Authors defenders.
Another comment posted to the authors critic's page. This one leads me to figure many people agree with the authors:Michael K Gray
Posted August 29, 2009 at 3:35 pm | Permalink
Your article is excellent, and covers my frustration with psychiatry in general vis: that its dogmas are based on little, no (or even truckloads of countervailing) evidence.
(Mostly the “NO evidence” model.)
You state that you have seen no-one propose that schizophrenia is adaptive.
The late psychologist Julian Jaynes did exactly this in his controversial tome “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.
I do not agree with him, but I merely point out that he proposed this theory.
Now you cannot say that no-one has forwarded the notion!
I think a good many of the comments here bring in "other factors" at play in this adaptive behavior. The brain may enter into a depressed state to concentrate on problem solving as the author suggests. However, self esteem and one's belief in their ability to solve or not solve problems then also plays a role. Anxiety issues may have other roots based on any range of things including mild to severe childhood abuse, and so on and so on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author's suggestion seems to say that on a very basic level depression may be an adaptive technique makes sense for the evolutionary reasons he avers, and seems very credible. However, our brains and individual minds being the complex instruments they are can swarm over any specific action like this one with a whole host of other reactions that can inhibit or help this more basic one.
I think a good many of the comments here bring in "other factors" at play in this adaptive behavior. The brain may enter into a depressed state to concentrate on problem solving as the author suggests. However, self esteem and one's belief in their ability to solve or not solve problems then also plays a role. Anxiety issues may have other roots based on any range of things including mild to severe childhood abuse, and so on and so on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author's suggestion seems to say that on a very basic level depression may be an adaptive technique makes sense for the evolutionary reasons he avers, and seems very credible. However, our brains and individual minds being the complex instruments they are can swarm over any specific action like this one with a whole host of other reactions that can inhibit or help this more basic one.
I have had 4 major depressive episodes. The first (which predated Prozac and the other SSRI meds) was triggered by my realization that I was failing at my first professional job. The depression lifted almost immediately when I was told to leave the firm (but given time to find a new job). The second (about 12-13 years later) was triggered by extreme stress from overwork (too much success), and a Paxil regimen helped "cure" it until the now-well-known "poop-out" effect caused it to stop working. The third was triggered by a prolonged lack of work and lasted for a number of years, almost destroying my career. My psychiatrist experimented with meds and dosages, but I never felt "right," and my wife told me after the depression lifted how my own kids, as well as friends, had feared my know-it-all diatribes and emotional explosions. I alternately became withdrawn or overbearing. What brought me out of this depression for about 6 months, oddly enough, were two diametrically opposed events: successful surgery for a non-life-threatening condition that nonetheless adversely affected my daily life and my father's health decline and death. Maybe the focus necessary to deal with the reality that my dad was going to die (he died less than 9 months after the diagnosis of heart failure) and to help determine his care and that of my mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's within the previous 2 years and needed 24/7 care, helped pull me out of this terrible depressive state. Of course, within a month after my dad died, I again became clinically depressed (the fourth episode (although I had an objective reason for falling into depression)). An "accident" of sorts helped lift me out of my serious funk. The pharmacy provided a too-large dosage of one of my meds, and when they realized it (after 3-4 weeks), my psychiatrist suggested I go off that med completely for a month. Well, within a couple of weeks, I felt much better. I provide my mental health history to illustrate that each depressive episode was triggered by a different cause/event and I came out of each for different reasons/due to different events or causes. In my best-functioning stage, when I was on Paxil, I was extraordinarily productive at work and happy with life. Ever since Paxil pooped out, I never have been able to recapture the intensity and focus that made me so successful professionally, although my overall mental state is good. I would not wish severe depression on my worst enemy. It did not help me think more clearly; it was like a living hell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a very interesting idea, but it conflicts with a good deal of research I am familiar with which finds that depressed individuals suffer deficits--not benefits--in social problem-solving. Furthermore, these problems are often exacerbated by rumination. (See: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1992-20015-001&CFID=3244891&CFTOKEN=35936220, http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/mood/pdf/ed/rumMEPBRAT.pdf, http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1996-93510-001&CFID=3244891&CFTOKEN=35936220 for examples.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvidence exists that different kinds of rumination exist, some of which are beneficial in different kinds of situations--however, the kind of endless loops seen in depression generally appear to be the kind that are not helpful.
I think that you are on to something with this idea, but it needs revision to account for these (rather robust!) scientific findings. Could it not be the case that we have a system which exists to put us into a "mild funk" in order to solve a reasonably-sized analytical problem, but that when we are faced with a problem too overwhelming to tackle quickly, the system can spin out of control?
"This is speculation to the extreme, not science."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis phrase pretty accurately sums up the entire discipline of evolutionary psychology, doesn't it? Well done, sir.
The one solution that has cured depression for 3 out of the 4 depressed people I know is VIGOROUS exercise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGREAT!!
It is about as sensible as telling depressed people to pull themselves up by their own boot straps.
Just how can we get vigorous exercise if we are depreswed because our backs have gone out AGAIN! And our knees hurt!
It is all just SO depressing :-(
I do think that some of the arguments here are because depression is not an either or condition. There are many forms of depression and many causes. For myself, I suspect that it has a lot to do with poor nutrition -- IF you can get yourself off the grog and chocolate and eat some healthy food n-- try with supplements first :-) -- the word really CAN seem to be a more cheerful place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>"One reason to suspect that depression is an adaptation, not a malfunction, comes from research into a molecule in the brain known as the 5HT1A receptor.">
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>There is little, if anything beneficial about depression. This is speculation to the extreme, not science.>
I really feel that here we are arguing about apples and motor bikes. Some people are referring to feeling low because of circumstances -- such as deaths, illness, loss of job, etc -- as "depression". This is certainly curable if not with 'rumination', then with time.
Then there is feeling unmotivated due to stress -- this too is curable by reconisdering your circumstances and removing the stress. (Leave the bastard!)
But "Depression" itself seems to come out of the blue -- with no triggers at all. And it snowballs -- there is nothing worse than feeling horrible even though you are aware you have a good life -- everything you have ever wanted -- yet you spend the days crying or curled up in a dark corner. This is NO MORE curable using cognitive behaviour therapy than diabetes is curable using cognitive behaviour therapy. Because the knowledge that there is no reason for your depression is incredibly depressing
Whether or not is is somehow related to desirable characteristics is beside the point -- maybe it is like so many other genetic thingies -- it confers advantages when present in a heterozygous individual but becomes crippling in the homozygous state. Maybe we depressive type women tend to have more children? The world is perceived as agin us, so we surround ourselves with our own offspring?? Maybe we are more cautious people -- more likely to commit suicide but less likely to indulge in silly unsafe behaviour (except when we choose to die?).
Maybe serious "Depression" is a disease of affluence?? People busy working to stay alive (subsistence hunting and gathering/farming) are less likely to become over introspective. People who might succumb to depression in an affluent society might be more realistic and so better hunters, gatherers or better carers for their crops and livestock??
There is a very real problem in all the discussion here as to WHAT we are referring to as "depression".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery possibly the "emotion" of depression is almost the same as that of grief. Since it is common in the animal kingdom, one would presume that it DOES have evolutionary value -- if not for the individual at least for the species
Consider:
THE YEAR OF THE GREYLAG GOOSE
Konrad Lorenz, 1978
English translation (C) 1979, Eyre Methuen Ltd
p. 31-38 (pp 32-37 illustrations only)
Geese possess a veritably human capacity for grief – and I will not accept that it is inadmissible anthropomorphism to say so. Agreed one cannot look into the soul of a goose, and the animal can hardly give us a verbal report of its feelings. But the same is true of the human child, and nevertheless John Bowlby, in his famous work on infant grief, has shown in a convincing and perturbing fashion how intensely small children can grieve. In all likelihood their grief is deeper and more powerful than that of adults, because they are not yet able to find comfort in rational considerations. A dog whose master has gone away on a trip grieves as if the master were gone forever; the master cannot explain to the dog that he will return in a week. Dogs that have been left for long periods of time suffer such emotional harm that they are unable to respond with complete happiness when the master returns. Often many weeks elapse before such a dog regains its former liveliness, and it may never do so.
In terms of emotion, animals are much more akin to us than is generally assumed. It is in the capacity for rational thought that the enormous gulf between humans and animals exists. In my lectures and in my conversations with laymen I frequently say, “Animals are much less intelligent that you are inclined to think, but in their feelings and emotions they are far less different from us than you assume.”
That opinion is supported by what we know about the brain structure and function of various parts of the brain. In human beings, as in animals, the capacity for rational intelligence is located in the forebrain (telencephalon), and the emotional centre is located in the more basal areas of the brain. The basal areas of the brain are not essentially different from those in the brains of the higher animals: however there is a corresponding enormous difference in the degree of development of the cerebral hemispheres in the forebrain.
Lorenz continued:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe objective, physiological symptoms of deep emotions, especially grief, are virtually the same in humans as in animals, particularly geese and dogs. In the vegetative nervous system, the tonus of the sympathetic system declines, while that of the parasympathetic system (especially the vagus nerve) increases. As a consequence the general excitability of the central nervous system is reduced, the musculature shows a decline in resilience, and the eyes sink deep into their orbits. Quite literally, a man, a dog, and a goose hang their heads, lose their appetites, and become indifferent to all stimuli emanating from the environment. For grief stricken human beings, as well as for geese, one effect is that they become outstandingly vulnerable to accidents. Just as the former tend to become easy victims of car accidents, so the latter tend to fly into high-tension cables or fall prey to predators, because of their reduced alertness.
Grief also has a dramatic effect on goose social behaviour. Grief-stricken geese are utterly unable to defend themselves from attacks launched by other geese. If a grieving goose has occupied an elevated position in the rigid hierarchy of the goose colony, its sudden defencelessness will be recognised and exploited with astounding speed by its former subordinates. It will be jostled and pushed from all sides, by even the weakest and least courageous members of the flock. In other words it will sink to the lowest level in the pecking order, becoming, in the words of animal sociologists, the “omega animal.”
>No one, and I mean absolutely no one who ever decided to jump off a bridge thought it was logical enterprise! Desperate yes, but not logical! >
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry. Rubbish.
When someone decides to kill themselves it seems the very MOST logical solution to their problems.
I applaud your efforts to bring new light to the understanding of depression. I have been through a major depression and found that the 'disease' theory did not make any sense to me at all. By allowing myself to go through the feelings without medication or chemical escape, I found a connection with myself that I had been lacking my whole life. Although at the time, I didn't understand what problem I was trying to work out, in retrospect, it was a time of true transformation for me. I am now more positive and happy than I have ever been and I am able to feel all of life's ups and downs without letting them. I think this idea needs to be expanded on and seriously considered by all in the field of mental health.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDepression is an emotional reaction to the lighting around you, and the differences between your expectations, and your achievements. If you expect to live in a 5 bedroom house, by age 30, but only live in a two bedroom apartment, you will be deeply depressed. However, if you expected to live in a studio apartment, and end up in a two bedroom apartment, you will be happy...not depressed. I am never depressed because I have low expectations, and so achieve more of what I set out to achieve. I also use 'Enhanced Spectrum', and 'Full Spectrum' , light bulbs rather than either conventional incandescents, or fluorescents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom "The Sign of Four":
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction...
"'My mind,' he said, 'rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation'...
" I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?"
Note that Conan Doyle, like his father, seemed to have suffered from what would now be diagnosed as depression...and that he was trained in the art of observation by Dr. Joseph Bell. However anecdotal (not to mention fictional) the above is, it seems to me to offer support for the authors' thesis.
How does this study compare to the U. Of Michigan study of May 2008 by Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D. on the 5HT1A receptator? The Michigan study implies that the 5HT1A receptor is less present with those with varying degrees of depression. The effect of the symptoms appear to be correct but the articles reflect opposite causes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does this study compare to the U. Of Michigan study of May 2008 by Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D. on the 5HT1A receptator? The Michigan study implies that the 5HT1A receptor is less present with those with varying degrees of depression. The effect of the symptoms appear to be correct but the articles reflect opposite causes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does this study compare to the U. Of Michigan study of May 2008 by Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D. on the 5HT1A receptator? The Michigan study implies that the 5HT1A receptor is less present with those with varying degrees of depression. The effect of the symptoms appear to be correct but the articles reflect opposite causes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does this study compare to the U. Of Michigan study of May 2008 by Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D. on the 5HT1A receptator? The Michigan study implies that the 5HT1A receptor is less present with those with varying degrees of depression. The effect of the symptoms appear to be correct but the articles reflect opposite causes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt age 75 with both a depression malfuntion and a mental adaption which needs to be rectified first?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA thought provoking article. In the magazine you say "Robust experimental evidence indicates that antidepressant medications make it difficult to stay focused on attentionally demanding tasks". So while SSRI medications might be useful in some cases over the short term, they may have unwanted effects over the longer term for analytic attention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have a reference to the robust experimental evidence ?
Please don't interpret flaws in the "conventional wisdom" about SSRIs as substantiation for anything else. It's obvious even to an amateur like me that SSRIs can't possibly work the way they supposedly do (simple question: if SSRIs directly and immediately increase serotonin, why do they take at least a week to "kick in"?). Most folks spout the same line simply because they really don't have a clue and they'd prefer to not admit it; showing that "the SSRI coventional wisdom is bunkum" is not very enlightening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I follow the logic correctly, it says that the 5HT1A receptor is highly conserved evolutionarity, and the 5HT1A receptor has something to do with depression, therefore depression is important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but I can't follow that leap... Couldn't the 5HT1A receptor have something to do with something else too? (After all, we now know that even ATP has a dual role as an intracellular messenger in some circumstances.) What's supposed to convince me that the conservation of the 5HT1A receptor and its role in depression have anything to do with each other?
30 years ago in "The Road Less Travelled" M. Scott Peck discussed the "healthiness of depression" and raised that depression was a necessary function for the transition between different stages in the maturity of the brain. (about 7 stages from memory).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile other parts of Peck's books suffer from idealist conceptions this seems to be an excellent starting point for inquiry.
The article seems too limited in its discussion of the brain. For instance is there a difference between the infantile, the adolescent and the adult brain? Is the transition from one to the other a simple linear development? Is depression the subjective expression of a transition between two "steady states"?
Depression may play the role the authors suggest but there seems to be more going on here and other lines of inquiry worth pursuing.
Haha, I am sorry JDoucette, I donno whether to laugh or to cry at your comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChicago school does not think economic depressions are good, but Austrian School does. Economic Recessions are when markets are becoming better and fixing the overbloated prices, its important to let market fall all the way to the bottom.
Its like Hangover, and throwing up after a night of drinking. Its the processing of all the leftover and unprocessed alcohol in the body.
http://mises.org/daily/807
I too appreciate the effects of physical exertion. The times my depression has been at its worst are times in which I've been immobile, having gone weeks without exercise. I now realize its importance and cannot due without it for very long. I feel that I truly relate to your afflictions. Keep moving.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI experience paralyzing depression periodically. Studying depression as it was considered in "the olden days", I discovered that this type of depression was called "sloth", for the inert behavior it engendered. Hexamon said that the best treatment for ruminant depression is manual labor; I concur. It is for me. This focuses my thinking away from the problem being chewed, and allows for the formation of spontaneous solutions to work themselves out in my "backbrain". I emerge from the work refreshed and less depressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am very intelligent and analytical and creative. I absolutely have the ability the author describes but often wish I didn't because the cost is high. If I was living in an ancient tribe, I would be know as the one who could solve the toughest problems of all kinds. That said, the tribe would give me the space I needed to recuperate and look after the small day to day things for me. Unfortunately, that does not work in the corporate world that I live in with constant demands. So, I live with a lot of anxiety of falling in that depressive state and not being able to look after myself - being perfectly organized or responsive to the onlookers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI completely Agree with 225commander at 10:32 AM on 08/26/09, " If you go through these comments and read all of them, many are from people who admit to suffering from some form of depression(myself included). The interesting thing is the high quality of thought/coherence/diction/grammer in these comments", 'stupid' people, do not get depressed, life is simple for them, their thought patterns do not allow for the kind of in-depth analytical thinking that many depressed people suffer from.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI admire rshoff's comment. For everything we know about depression suggests that rather than enhancing fitness, it reduces it. If there is counter evidence that depressive rumination outweighs all these problems and enhances reproduction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnxiety seems to fit nicely into the evolutionay model as in activation of the sympathetic nervous system useful for saving lives. The combination of depression and anxiety, then, allows for people to be analytical over complex social problems and can be activated for short term survival purposes. The psychiatric disorder that I am puzzled about with this model is depression wtih psychotic symptoms. How do delusions and hallucinations help to solve complex problems. Perhaps they are too rare to be considered an evolutionary asset.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnxiety seems to fit nicely into the evolutionary model as an activation of the sympathetic nervous system useful for defense and protection. The combination of depression and anxiety, then, allows for people to be analytical of complex social problems in addition to being activated for short term survival. The psychiatric disorder I am puzzled about with this theoretical application of evolution is depression with psychotic features. How could distancing oneself from reality help to solve worldly, albeit complex, problems? Perhaps it does not help and depression with psychotic features is too rare to be considered an evolutionary asset.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a really interesting study. I'm not sure what I think about it, but it's definitely worth looking into. My older sister was diagnosed with depression, but it might be bi-polar disorder, the doctors are still out on that one. The inability of doctors to make a decision about my sister makes me question any medical study even more than normal. http://www.aponestopshopping.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's interesting to look at depression from a scientific perspective rather than a social or emotional one. Most of us think of depression as a mental or emotional illness, which it is, but it's interesting to read this article and realize there may be physiological reasons for it as well. Great article! -jjones from www.tracs.ca
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps this woman is depressed due to jeans, but that she's about 35 pounds underweight...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.imagingatoms.com
When are people going to learn that mental illness doesn't confer some kind of evolutionary advantage? Most mental illnesses in humans are a symptom of the brain's struggle to cope with the requirements of language. They are complex information processing disorders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisD J Wray
www.atotalawareness.com/other.htm
This analysis enlightens a historical fact which was more bothersome than not. Many American historians concur, after analysis of writings and described behavior, that President Abraham Lincoln was often depressed. Given the problems he faced, and given the manner in which he solved them, his depression may have indeed been a positive function.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all think we get depressed - have the blues, feel lonely, etc. etc. However, some people are very susceptible to being completely debilitated by their condition, unable to function and even developing symptoms of psychosis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I think the author describes the common symptoms of depression suffered at times by many if not all people, there are others whose depression quickly develops into an ostensibly permanent debilitating state from which they are unlikely to recover from without some physical shock (OK - pun intended). I think that most people have little or no idea what severe depression can do to people susceptible to it - I know I did not until I visited a loved one at a psychiatric hospital. I also think that there is some separate conditions not described in this article that renders some people susceptible to this more debilitating state.
Sleep experts say that most mental illness is due to poor, and little, sleep. To get the sleep you get at the coast when the wind blows in from the sea just heat salt water in an oil burner overnight. This cures insomnia in just five nights, and gets rid of all the symptoms of mental illness as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe major flaw in this article is common to most articles that attempt to address depression; the idea that depression can be placed into a single category. Depression is a symptom that is an indicator of many problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no single answer.