
New Study Challenges a Genetic Link to Stress, Depression - BobbyVsTheDevil
https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/04/10/genetic-link-to-stress-and-depression-questioned/118890.html
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cariaso
The lack of a link to depression has been known since 2009

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-
abstract/18410...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-
abstract/184107)

What remains interesting is a plausible effect on placebo

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19052197](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19052197)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26272535](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26272535)

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1zee
Completely anecdotal, but many of my friends that are of Asian descent have a
tough time putting a finger on or grasping what depression is. It almost seems
like it's not something that they have been wired to be able to feel or
experience.

I was wondering if there was any research to back up that tendency....

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rhizome
The discipline of Psychology is regional. It's only a bit over 100 years old
and (basically, work with me here) originated in Austria.

As I read just the other day from, I think, Linda Tirado, many cultures have
no concept of mental illness. Either you're normal or you're retarded, and
normal people are expected to power through whatever problems on their own. If
you can't, then you must be developmentally disabled.

~~~
ams6110
Warning: personal, not medical opinion: I've always subscribed to the theory
that depression is an indicator that you need to make changes in your life.

I've been more-or-less depressed for probably 10 years. If I have nothing else
that I _have_ to do I'm very likely to spend the day in bed. I hate weekends
because there's no work/office routine to distract me. I know (or think I
know) what the cause is, and I could pull up stakes and make major changes and
get away from it, but I've chosen not to for reasons that are complicated. If
I'm right, it will resolve itself in about another four years.

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DanBC
> I've always subscribed to the theory that depression is an indicator that
> you need to make changes in your life.

Depression is an umbrella term that covers several different forms of the
illness.

But most people treating depression talk about the "bio psycho social" model -
that people may needs meds for the biological stuff; a talking therapy for the
psychological stuff; and lifestyle changes and interventions for all the rest.

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thisisforyou
Original articla:
[http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201744...](http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201744a.html)

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abraves10001
Interesting, I wonder if studies that find a negative, like this one, are more
likely to stand the test of time than ones like this study rebutted.

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tokenadult
The press release is misleading. Indeed, press releases about scientific
studies are almost always misleading, which is why they are not the preferred
source for stories about new scientific findings.

I participate most weeks during the United States school year in a "journal
club" about human behavior genetics. The meetings include researchers who
research genetic influences on depression and other mental disorders. It has
been known for a LONG time that depression runs in families in a way that
demonstrates genetic influence on depression. (In other words, adoption
studies and twin studies, and especially studies on the rare monozygotic twins
who are brought in separate households, make clear that genetic similarity of
human individuals is linked to their similarity in risk for depression.) It
has also been known for a LONG time that environmental influences, including
the vague set of influences called "stress," matter for development of
depression, so sometimes monozygotic ("identical") twins are discordant for
depression, because they have different life experiences.

What the press release is about, and what scientists have been trying to
figure out during my adult life, is what the nature of genetic influences on
depression might be. It has also been known for the better of a decade, and
suspected much earlier by the more astute researchers on human behavior
genetics, that MANY genes influence any one human behavior trait of interest.
Depression is SURELY, as we can now say by the results of massive genome-wide
association studies (GWASs), influenced by hundreds of genes, each of which
has only a small effect on risk. So the press release reports that an early
finding that was expected to show that one gene variant had a lot to do with
developing depressing has rather shown that that gene variant, as is true of
all other gene variants, sometimes has no detectable effect on a patient's
having depression or not.

The human mood regulation system is just that, a SYSTEM, so perturbations of
many different aspects of the system can cause clinical signs that are
identified as "depression." What helps depression, in general, is a both-and
approach of prescribed medicine under the supervision of a physician and talk
therapy provided by a psychotherapist. Most patients these days with diagnosed
depressed do MUCH better than patients did a generation ago. Some patients are
helped a lot by one or another of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs), and some are not helped by those medicines at all. And that's all
because depression is a clinical condition with a diverse set of underlying
biochemical causes, as we know for sure from GWAS studies.

Further study of genetic relationships to depression should help develop new
drugs that help some patients who are not helped by current drugs or that help
patients who are already helped by existing drugs but with fewer side effects.
But we are NOWHERE near being able to use genetic test results to decide which
drug to use first: patients have to talk to their doctors about how they are
feeling as they undergo treatment. Your best bet for finding good treatment if
you feel depressed is to find out what has helped a NEAR relative who has also
suffered depression.

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quirkot
Can I get a shaman in here for some verification?

~~~
Raphmedia
Context:

Meta joke to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102532)

