The fact that conditions such as sleep apnea (insufficient nocturnal brain oxygenation) lead to depression and anxiety in a significant number of cases illustrates that depression isn't always an indicative of a social problem. It can also be a strictly biochemical issue (there are a lot of things that affect neurotransmitter efficiency for instance).
We do actually have a lot of research into factors that can cause depression, which the article mentions:
"Different genetic variations can affect whether individuals respond to certain types of stress, such as sleep deprivation, physical or emotional abuse, and lack of social contact, by becoming depressed."
This is good news, but also shows how little we actually understand the complexity of our bodies and our brain in particular. We have good antidepressants, but besides observing the positive effects, there doesn't seem much of a consensus on what exactly these psychoactive molecules are doing to help.
So no surprise that something seemly simple like sleep deprivation can have a massive effect on the issue. It's not like we understand all the mysteries of sleep either.
The involved mechanism and chemistry are so complex, and we barley scrap the surface, even with all the advances in medicine. So many people arguing about what depression is, what it's causes are, but it would be foolish to assume we have this even remotely figured out, and I would be very open-minded to anything on this issue.
> Rather, it's a byproduct of a seriously messed up world/society/personal relations landscape, that depressed individuals are more sensitive to or have felt more deeply.
- Even if this were true, that doesn't preclude depression from causing biochemical changes (e.g. inflammation).
- Saying this is the only cause of depression doesn't make a lot of sense because it doesn't account for, say, post-surgical or post-viral depression.
Depression and anxiety are by definition not ideal physcological health.
And almost no ones social needs are ever truly completely met. we also know already that social support helps anxiety and depression regardless of whether it is a root cause. So your test wouldn't falsify if it returned a negative value, nor support with a positive correlation.
I believe that a small percentage of the population is born neurochemically imbalanced (classic clinical depression), but also that the recent rise in anxiety and depression rates is mainly caused by societal and technological factors.
'Point 2: Depression is an incredibly complicated topic. It is a psychological construct, the net result of thousands and thousands of genes, filtered through a modern technological world, and then filtered through inventories, interviews, and assessments. For this reason, I am not at all surprised that Guzey was able to find studies that suggest that sleep deprivation might have some benefit for some people. I would HIGHLY recommend this new, open-access Nature.....'
All of this is completely irrelevant to Guzey's point, which is that sleep deprivation is a known treatment for depression. You are going off on a tangent about the genetics of depression, while failing to engage with the topic under discussion.
As best I can tell there's not implication of causation there - it could be that depression causes the immune disorder, just as it causes any other number of conditions. I don't know the value in assuming we can categorize it like that.
I assume with the oxygen thing you're intentionally missing my point which is that a regular momentary disruption isn't considered a disorder.
It's easy to forget that science has found many conditions that affect the brain that, because science can easily treat or prevent them, we no longer consider to be mental health conditions. Off the top of my head, hookworm, syphilis, lead poisoning, various vitamin deficiencies, various prion diseases, thyroid diseases, sleep apnea, ergot poisoning, fetal alcohol syndrome...
Sure, there are almost certainly many cases of anxiety, depression, and ADHD that are not amenable to "You have a chemical imbalance, here is a pill to fix it, get on your way." However, society has reaped enormous rewards from the idea common mental issues may have simple and understandable causes that can be treated or prevented in unfeeling, cookie-cutter fashion.
It's really bizarre to me how fixated people are on viewing depression solely through the "disease with a biological cause" lens. Even in this article, which acknowledges the serious flaws in the serotonin hypothesis, all the alternatives they explore are around other biological things like other neurotransmitters, inflammation, etc.
Maybe more people are anxious and depressed than in the past because modern life really sucks for a lot of people. I'm not saying that's a simple thing to fix, and certainly there is a biological component for some people...but the idea that societal changes are increasing rates of anxiety and depression seems way more plausible than there being some sudden and mysterious shift in the biology of a significant percentage of the population that needs correcting via medication.
Indeed. Anxiety pretty much == serotonin dysregulation. Depression could be inflammation, mindset, low brain serotonin, low noradrenaline, low dopamine, all of the above, or something else. Low brain serotonin would be a cause.
I don't know, but I found this to be the interesting bit:
> Depressed and anxious people might simply be too good at learning about bad outcomes
> Over the past few decades, researchers have been discussing that mental health issues such as depression and anxiety might fundamentally be disorders of learning, rather than outcomes of a ‘chemical imbalance’ that requires correction by a serotonin boost. Specifically, certain individuals which have atypical function of the serotonin system (which might be caused by genetic factors or stressful lives) may be at risk of developing depression or anxiety because they are too good at learning about negative outcomes, and thus are more likely to feel that the world is a bad place if they experience negative life events. One of the most talked-about studies in the psychiatric literature supports this possibility (6). It found that individuals with a particular genotype affecting the serotonin system were more likely than others to develop depression or anxiety only if they had experienced stressful life events, such as child abuse, unemployment, or loss of a loved one. Clearly, having an atypical serotonin system alone wasn’t enough – it had to be combined with negative experiences.
Proof that "Some brains are neurologically misconfigured and prone to chemical depletion or lack receptors for it (ex: serotonin or dopamine)" and that this is the cause of depression.
Also keep in mind that depression isn't always caused by serotonin issues or remediated by increasing serotonin (which is somewhat redundant with this article, though I think the article paints serotonin too negatively).
For example, if someone has bipolar disorder (or similar issues), they may have fairly standard serotonin concentration and receptor activation, but an SSRI may not help much with their depression.
Mental health issues may have no clear physiological cause. Even if there's a physiological aspect, it's unclear what the causes that condition. Depression, for example, we see low serotonin levels, but we don't know why the levels are low. In the case of addiction, the mechanism is clear. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/278/5335/45
> It is caused by the imbalance of serotonin and readrenalin neurotransmitters.
Totally agree depression is a serious mental illness, but this description is like describing bugs as a "debugging deficiency". We know depression and bugs can be fixed with debugging/ssris but just because we can fix them with it doesn't mean the opposite is the cause.
For instance in addition to serotonin and nor-epinephrine we also know glutamate (nmda and ampa) is involved, as well as opiates, gaba, bdnf, dopamine, and inflammation.
> Depressed people move more slowly, in a characteristic pattern called “psychomotor retardation”. They display perceptual abnormalities. They’re more likely to get sick. There are lots of results like this.
> Depression has to be about something more than just beliefs; it has to be something fundamental to the nervous system.
Depression is frequently related to metabolic problems: people are exhausted because their mitochondria aren't putting out enough ATP to run their nervous system.
There are various interventions that can help. B-vitamins are important cofactors for burning sugar to make energy. T4 thyroid is activated by the liver to make T3, which is one factor that boosts the metabolism. If the liver is overworked (alcohol, drugs, hormonal imbalance, too much pufa, etc), it can have trouble activating adequate thyroid.
Emotional resiliency is a big factor here too. My friend was really just lonely before she met me. She's doing better now because she now has a 'vision' for her future (she originally 'lost her future' when she was expelled from high school, essentially for being depressed and self-medicating with drugs that are now being investigated for treating depression).
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