
Depression’s Upside - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html
======
RevRal
There's productive depression and unproductive depression. Some people aren't
compelled into productive depression.

Productive depression is a dignified depression¸ where the person realizes
that the object of the angst is a little elusive. They know what the problem
_isn't_ , and it is never the most obvious thing. They do their best to manage
it and figure out what the _real_ problem is.

Unproductive depression is simply where you stop thinking about the problem
too soon. Either blaming a facade of the depression, the most obvious and
apparent source of the depression, or by giving up hope that the facade is
solvable. Essentially, these people give up and stagnate.

There is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone profusely blame the wrong
thing for their depression. There's little chance of these people escaping
into productive work, because they've given up. They can't even start by
realizing that what they _think_ is depressing them, might not actually be
what is depressing them. That's step point five!

Depression does not make genius.

Where do I think productive depression originates? Well, I partly think it's a
conscious choice where the intelligent person chooses not to ignore a problem,
and there are a lot of problems to be depressed about. Stuff that does not
_need_ to exist. This really is only my opinion, but we shouldn't have to deal
with depression. We shouldn't need to "cope" with stupid, arcane ideas. But
we'll just have to manage for now.

~~~
anr
As the article says, malfunctioning isn't a privilege of the body, minds can
do it too.

So the word "pathetic" is uncalled for. William Styron wrote a fantastic book
about what it is like to be depressed: "Darkness Visible". Well worth a read.

~~~
RevRal
From my comment:

 _There is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone profusely blame the wrong
thing for their depression._

I'm wasn't specifically talking about people who casually blame the wrong
thing. Maybe I need a stronger word than profusely....

On Darwin's side of the spectrum you have, well, Darwin. On other end of the
spectrum you have people coming up with intricate ideas about how minorities
are destroying everyone's lives.

Even though there is a lot of mental work in carefully choosing their illusory
axioms to make the rest of their ideas naturally fall into place, I am very
reluctant to call that work productive and I _do_ think that it's pathetic.

Of course, the very same mistake was made with this person, who profusely
blames the wrong thing, as the person who casually blames the wrong thing:
they stopped trying to find the real problem too soon. There are only two
words that come to mind: undignified and arrogant.

Arrogant that they're questioning the wrong thing and not questioning whether
the output of their thought process is precise, and therefore they're not
questioning the thought process itself.

Perhaps it is _questioning_ that compels people into great, productive work.
Depressed or not! Darwin held himself to high standards while he
simultaneously, and perpetually, questioned his thoughts and the results of
his thoughts. He did this to a point where his thoughts were very precise and
congruent with the real world.

I _do not_ think it was the depression that compelled him into productivity,
but his dignity. Compelled into a productive depression! He couldn’t just
shrug off his depression since that would mean ignoring certain issues. Again,
this really is only my own speculation, but I don't think depression needs to
exist in the amount that it does today. I don't think we're _born_ depressed
and very rarely chemically imbalanced.

Since so many minds are malfunctioning, these are not problems of the
individual but signify a much larger problem: a problem of a malfunctioning
thinking on a global scale. It is how people mis-attribute this malfunction
that I find pathetic.

This "malfunctioning of thinking" expresses itself a lot in life. It
accumulates and wears down on people to a point of depression or lethargy.

I should also point out that I don’t mean “pathetic” in the sense of “hate.”
When it comes down to it, the problem is too complicated to just blame an
individual and I can't expect everyone to have this natural dignity that
Darwin possessed, or the will to teach it to themselves. I feel more
compassionate at the individual's level than ticked off.

The reason I’m ranting a little bit is because I take issue with glorifying
the wrong thing (not you, but implied in the article). In this case:
depression. I hope this makes my thoughts on this clearer.

Also, checking out that book.

------
chipsy
I'd blame vitamin D deficiency for the bulk of depression cases in the modern
world. Indoors culture, heavy clothing, an aversion to organ meats - which the
biology tells us are the most nutrient-rich parts. It adds up to a massive
nutrition gap, one only slightly offset by the tiny amounts added to dairy.

~~~
msluyter
I recently started taking vitamin D and I feel great. I'm more energetic,
sleep better, and, yes, feel happier. So that's one data point in favor of
your thesis.

~~~
somedaywings
I'm going to be _really_ grateful to you guys if this ends up being true for
me. Going out to get some now :)

~~~
msluyter
I should add that to really know how much you should be taking, you should
have your blood levels tested, as different people absorb it differently.
Here's a post on William Davis' Heart Scan Blog (oriented toward heart health,
which includes Vitamin D supplementation):

[http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/getting-
vitamin-d-...](http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/getting-vitamin-d-
right.html)

He suggests about 6000 units/day as average.

------
Estragon
The implicit assumption of this article is that tendency to depression is a
heritable genetic trait which is preserved in the population by selection
pressure. It goes on to seek an explanation for the prevalence of depression
in terms of greater reproductive fitness. The risk is that by not examining
this assumption, it may be laboring under a misapprehension. Depression might
be a learned behavior: more "software" than "hardware." The near-total failure
to validate anti-depressants as an effective treatment for depression[1]
suggests that we don't have a clue as to its actual etiology.

[1] E.g. [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families/health-news/antidepressant-drugs-udontu-work-ndash-official-
study-787264.html)

    
    
      "Given these results, there seems to be little reason to 
      prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most 
      severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments 
      have failed to provide a benefit. This study raises
      serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug
      licensing and how drug trial data is reported."
    

__Update after reading the whole thing __: I like the practical developments
this research has led to in Thomson's own practice. E.g. (page 6)

    
    
      “What you’re trying to do is speed along the rumination 
      process,” Thomson says. “Once you show people the dilemma
      they need to solve, they almost always start feeling 
      better.”
    

But he seems to have really been reaching with his scientific conclusions.

~~~
Retric
I think the increase in depression may be a result of changes in the human
environment over time. Depression may be an evolutionary acceptable downside
to some other useful trait, which is simply more common now.

This is pure BS, but an example might be: People respond to rewards with mild
addictive behavior, which a useful adaption. However, in our day to day lives
there are few short term rewards which messes with the reward pathways in our
brain leading to depression. So the an effective treatment might be playing
games with a specific type of reward structure.

PS: Depression is a vary generic problem, so there might be hundreds of
different failures that all result in the same symptoms.

------
jvdh
How prevalent are anti-depressants?

I get the impression that a large percentage of the american youth are on
Prozac or others, and/or even medication for ADD. And also that the normal
response for depression is medication.

In the Netherlands this is quite the reverse. Anti-depressants (AFAIK) are
only used as a last resort, or as a kick-start for the healing process when it
is a very deep depression. Kids in highschool taking drugs against
psychological disorders is almost unheard of, except in clear cases of ADD.

~~~
pyre
I suspect that reports of this are highly exaggerated by the people that think
that _every_ problem is solvable through 'putting your nose to the grindstone'
and that everything else is just 'weakness.'

~~~
gruseom
I disagree. The idea that our society hyper-medicalizes and therefore
overmedicates human problems is, to my mind, very sensible. It by no means
follows that all emotional problems are "just weakness" and that the solution
is to pull oneself up by the bootstraps. Indeed, given that the latter is the
ultimate in crude ideas of how to approach the psyche, it actually goes hand-
in-hand with the hypermedical approach: if that's the only alternative, it's
no wonder that people resort to drugs.

------
kqr2
Blogging as therapy?

 _He cites as evidence a recent study that found “expressive writing” — asking
depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly
shorter depressive episodes._

~~~
tpyo
Maybe they have no one to talk to.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think this is part of my problem - I don't have a close friend that I can
talk to about stresses at home, etc..

------
surki
On a similar note, I found this book [http://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return-
Self-Anthony-Storr/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return-Self-Anthony-
Storr/dp/0743280741/) to be quite interesting. It discusses about solitude,
its necessity and other related issues like depression in detail.

------
lionhearted
One page:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?pagewanted=print)

------
jgrant27
[http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2009-10-29-223937_the_powe...](http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2009-10-29-223937_the_power_of_negative_thinking.html)

------
radu_floricica
I don't have time right now to look for the source, but it's reasonably well
knows that depression improves critical thinking directly. (maybe this?
[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a785...](http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a785363361)
)

