| ▲ | citrin_ru 8 hours ago |
| If you view a world at a certain angle there is always something to worry about: 1. World in not perfect, it doesn't confirm to how we want it to be (and could not even in theory given that different people want it to be different) 2. The future cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy so even if all is perfect today you can worry that it will turn bad in the future. When looking at the same reality one persons sees the situation as OK and another as a an endless and hopeless disaster it is hard to tell who is right. A depressed person would tell that most people around him are wrong and are optimistic only because they don't understand how bad all is. |
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| ▲ | 16bitvoid 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| That's incredibly reductive. I'm sure some people's depression can boil down to a matter of perspective, but it's naive to extrapolate that to everyone with depression. I'm incredibly optimistic and am content with my position in life. My default state is being mindful of the present and I don't think about things too far into the future. I very rarely ever feel stressed out over things in life. However, none of that changes the fact that I feel completely empty and find no joy in things. Interests are nearly non-existent, emotions dialed to 1, and the only thing I'm motivated to do is lay in bed staring at the ceiling... unless I'm on sertraline. Admittedly that's just anecdotal, but I worked in a clinical neuroscience lab researching treatments for severe treatment-resistant depression (read: people who tried so many options including CBT that they even tried electroshock therapy). The only thing that helped those subjects was a regimen of personalized neuroimaging-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation for 10 minutes every hour for 10 hours every day for a week. Even then, it wasn't permanent. Some saw improvement for months, others only weeks. For some people, it's not just a matter of "perspective". |
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| ▲ | citrin_ru 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not telling it's a matter of perspective, my point is that I see no objective metrics to tell apart if the situation is bad so it's one expected to be depressed and when the situation is good (so only medication / therapy would help). And it makes discussions around this topic harder. | |
| ▲ | sameesh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If its not just a matter of perspective and only medication can help, etc, then why do we call depression a "psychological" or "mental health" concern? Why isn't it just considered a neurological disease? | | |
| ▲ | seba_dos1 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure what your point is, many mental health concerns are caused by neurological diseases. In case of depression in particular, it appears to be a label given to a big bag of various issues you may have causing similar symptoms. | |
| ▲ | thewebguyd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Depression is increasingly starting to be seen as a neurobiological disorder as we learn more. In my own opinion, we need to stop viewing "mental health" as a separate class of conditions from general/physical health. A mental illness is a health/medical condition just like any other and shifting our views and diagnostic criteria in that direction would do a lot to remove the stigma associated with mental illness. Someone with depression has a chronic illness, not a temporary "it's just in your head" condition. | | |
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| ▲ | kanbankaren 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I feel completely empty and find no joy in things. Maybe the idea that we should find joy and feel full is wrong? We are on a random planet circling a random star in an unfathomable Universe. STOP looking for meaning and you are liberated. The quest for meaning by itself might be exhausting and makes you feel depressed. | | |
| ▲ | 16bitvoid 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Who said I'm looking for meaning? I'm not. It's not as liberating as you might think. A joyless existence is either suffering or nothingness. A life without meaning, either internal or external, is one where nothing is meaningful with no motivation thus one of crippling catatonia til death. All I can say is just that it doesn't feel good and if you can't feel good about anything, your calculus of your life inevitably leads to the conclusion that existence isn't worth it. | | |
| ▲ | trilogic 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is only one cure/hack for Nihilism or similar... Go somewhere where you need to work physically you az off to afford daily food. You will be so exhausted eventually that:
1 you will not have any energy left for thoughts.
2 If you have any energy left, you will give it to angriness which will lead to other circumstances which are none related to find the meaning of life. Ignorance may lead to happiness and friends :) | | |
| ▲ | 16bitvoid 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think a lot of people are conflating depression with "bad thoughts". That's just one possible symptom, usually as a result of a combination of both anxiety and depression. I didn't have anxiety, just depression. I rarely thought. I existed on autopilot. I was physically exhausted on a daily basis as a division 1 athlete in college. Often went days without eating either because I simply forgot to eat or forgot to make time for it between classes and training. Didn't change anything. I think something people are forgetting is that motivation is either driving you toward something you want or driving you away from things you specifically don't want. A complete lack of motivation means I wasn't motivated to do anything to get something, but also I wasn't motivated to anything to avoid something either. I wasn't motivated to eat to avoid hunger pangs. I wasn't motivated to quit my sport to avoid routine physical exhaustion. Instead, my empty autopilot existence just freely acted on the expectations of those around me as a proxy for motivation. | | |
| ▲ | trilogic 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Interesting reply thanks. I would say though, If I were programmed or a program or whatever you name it... I would realize the under statement: If One can´t be happy with what One have now, One will never-ever be in any circumstances. This is not your case certainly but is connected with the autopilot (meaning we don´t get to choose. |
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| ▲ | moron4hire 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, most folk get the causation backwards. They think having meaning in life will pull you out of depression. It's the other way around. You have to get pulled out of depression to be able to find meaning in your life. | | |
| ▲ | trilogic 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Realizing that some "chemical reactions" can change your destiny then further learning that when you want something, all the universe is bound to conspires in helping you to achieve it. This one came out good :) |
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| ▲ | Forgeties79 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > A depressed person would tell that most people around him are wrong and are optimistic only because they don't understand how bad all is. Or because of a legitimate chemical imbalance or some other cognitive issue they can’t control alone. Right? |
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| ▲ | jodrellblank 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > "There is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities" - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2022... and > "the etiology of depression is incredibly complex, the narrative that it is caused by a simple “chemical imbalance” persists in lay settings. We sought to understand where people are exposed to this explanation" - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11752450/ and > "Onset of depression more complex than a brain chemical imbalance. It's often said that depression results from a chemical imbalance, but that figure of speech doesn't capture how complex the disease is. Research suggests that depression doesn't spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals." - https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-dep... and > "Analysis: Depression is probably not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – new study" - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/analysis-depression-prob... (These are not thoroughly checked articles, they're the first few search results; however claims that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance ought to be able to show where that idea originated, how the imbalance is measured in patients, where that hypothesis is supported by evidence, why antidepressents don't fix depression in half of patients, and several more suspicious things). | | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn’t say it was simply that. You’re twisting my words and these studies to discount all of behavioral health. | | |
| ▲ | jodrellblank 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes you did. No I'm not. (I've written paragraphs and paragraphs thinking through some of my views in this thread. You wrote three words naming a thing which doesn't seem to exist. If you want more engagement, engage more. What words am I twisting? Where did you say it was anything more detailed than that? What behaviour that people "can't control alone" are you talking about?) | | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I did not and I am telling you I do not believe that it is that simple. You do not need to waste time arguing against your incorrect interpretation of my comment. If you need me to say I could have phrased it better, sure, I could have phrased it better. But I am now telling you exactly what I mean and think so we don’t need to do this song and dance. For emphasis: I do not think it is simply/exclusively “chemical imbalance.” | | |
| ▲ | jodrellblank 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | But why do you think it is at all "chemical imbalance" when that doesn't seem to be an actual thing? What evidence convinced you? What measurements were taken on a human brain to diagnose the imbalance? |
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| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ajross 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the "people with anxiety should just stop being worried" attitude that failed to help for centuries. Whether or not you believe SSRI's are clinically effective, denying the existence of mental health disorders is not helping. No, anxiety and depression aren't simply a matter of perspective. |
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| ▲ | citrin_ru 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | My point is that it's hard if not possible to objectively tell if the situation you are in is good or bad. And I'm not trying to deny anything. | | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | IAmBroom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So your point is explicitly off-topic to the subject matter (read the title above). Gotcha. |
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| ▲ | sfn42 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Depression and pessimism are not the same thing. |
