First of all, I do have first- and second-hand experience of this, so I'm not talking entirely out of my ass.
Also, there are actually a lot of people who deny any psychological involvement with depression, and you'll see this a lot on forums (including HN). I'm not going to go into more detail, as it will likely just start another flame war, suffice to say it is definitely an issue.
I'm well aware of the difficulty in doing anything about depression, and it wasn't backpeddling. I was just making the point that it is possible to improve depression through making changes. I wasn't saying that it's people's own fault, or they just need to pull themselves together, or anything like that, which seems to be what people somehow implied from my comments.
> Also, there are actually a lot of people who deny any psychological involvement with depression, and you'll see this a lot on forums (including HN).
To be fair, a lot of psychotherapy advocates claim the same thing about physiological causes. This is kind of funny because the first step in a mood disorder diagnosis is supposed to be the elimination of physiological explanations, but in practice that process is often... let's be kind to the GPs/PCPs and say "optimized for time".
Basically, anyone who claims to have the one true solution to depression is either lying or believes a little too much in their own hype. Some are people who got lucky and had their first treatment work wonders (not a typical experience) and now think that everyone with depression needs to try their specific treatment, but a lot are people with a financial, reputational, or ideological stake in people's beliefs about treatment.
On one hand, depression treatment is certainly a case of "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" [1]. On the other hand, it's also a case of "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose; that is not a weakness, that is life" [2].
[1]: popularly attributed to Wayne Gretzky
[2]: Jean-Luc Picard; Star Trek: The Next Generation 02x21 Peak Performance
That's bizarre. We must travel in very different circles.
I've never seen anybody claim there's nothing that can be done for depression. I've seen people say they've tried all of the standard stuff and nothing helped. That's different though. I'm not doubting you, just expressing surprise. It's also possible that our different experiences are due to us interpreting things differently.
Anyway, I don't frequent those types of forums these days, though I have in a previous life. You're probably much more knowledgeable about what's common in them than I am, at this point.
Also, there are actually a lot of people who deny any psychological involvement with depression, and you'll see this a lot on forums (including HN). I'm not going to go into more detail, as it will likely just start another flame war, suffice to say it is definitely an issue.
I'm well aware of the difficulty in doing anything about depression, and it wasn't backpeddling. I was just making the point that it is possible to improve depression through making changes. I wasn't saying that it's people's own fault, or they just need to pull themselves together, or anything like that, which seems to be what people somehow implied from my comments.