> Most of the times, there's a clear reason for a depression
I'm gonna have to disagree pretty strongly with that assertion without any supporting evidence. In fact, I would argue that rarely is depression caused by a clear reason which has a direct path to resolution. This is the exact perspective that makes those going through depression feel like others are trivializing what they're going through.
That's probably why you're getting downvoted, since it's #1 on your list.
>because many people suffering from depression haven't been "done" anything to by anyone
Some may lack the tools to identify the reason for their depression, that's not the same as nothing having happened to them.
>it's not out of the ordinary or different to what's been done to other people who are not depressed
It's entirely possible that the people who are not depressed are in fact the ones who are sick.
>some react with extreme depression to the most ordinary and mild of life's occurrences.
Or, the mild life occurrence just serves as a tipping point that cascades and causes the person to reevaluate their situation and come to the conclusion that they are dissatisfied.
>but you can’t get depressed because life is too logical
Can you elaborate? In my experience this is pretty much the only reason for depression, eg life does not happen how your logic tells you it suppose to happen.
> What if people get depressed because their lives suck and they had a shitty childhood?
But people don't only get depressed because of those things; plenty of people's "lives suck" who aren't depressed, and plenty of people with good lives _are_ depressed.
"The cause is believed to be a combination of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors.... About 40% of the risk appears to be related to genetics."
So yes, thoughts and beliefs are part of depression, but they certainly don't explain all of it.
You may have a misconception of the causes of depression.
I am sorry awful things have happened to you in life, but fortunately, as your example shows, negative external stimuli are not a 1:1 correlation with depression. Unfortunately, positive circumstances are also not a 1:1 correlation with the lack of depression. While stress, trauma, tragedy, loss, adversity may all push some people into depression, there are plenty more who, for no discernible external cause, find themselves in irrational states of despair or other forms of depression, and it is no more solvable through self-motivated resilience than the hallucinations of a more tangible mental illness like schizophrenia could be solved through resilience. Perhaps a useful way of thinking about it if you don't quite understand depression ( though maybe not neurologically accurate ) is to also think of depression as a form of involuntary hallucination. Only instead of an auditory or visual hallucination, the brain is producing an emotional hallucination.
As for the downvotes, it's probably because the tone of your comment, perhaps unintentionally, comes off as skeptical & dismissive of the miserable reality that many people experience first hand.
Finally, & unrelated, it looks like you do some very fascinating work!
> If everything was going well (including your own health), you would not be depressed.
This is tautological, and hence true, but an uninteresting point. Just pretend it says "... Depression is when you feel down even when all is going well except of course for the disorder in your brain."
> Yes, because in the absence of actual struggle in life, things like getting up start to look hard. Without seeing actual hardship, non-hardships look difficult.
That's an overly broad statement ignoring a lot of what research has found about causes of depression.
> This is conceptually related to the concept of hedonic adaptation. If you were to take someone who is actually struggling and put them in the shoes of a depressed, privileged westerner, they would be overjoyed.
No, they wouldn't. They would suffer from depression and stop being able to feel joy. That's what depression does to your mind at some point. Put that person in the shoes of someone with cancer, that cancer is not going away.
> Someone who has never known struggle or threat may not realize how happy they should be.
This is another broad statement for which there is no support.
Depression will eat your self-esteem and energy, it doesn't care if have been hit by hardships before or not.
What's you angle ? Depressed people are spoiled brats ? Depression is not a real struggle ? Only bored people get depression ? Just say so and stop sugar-coating what you think.
You seem to think depression is only in the head and try to rationalize it.
If you ever meet someone who admits their depression to you, please keep your thesis to yourself.
edit:
> Yes, because in the absence of actual struggle in life, things like getting up start to look hard. Without seeing actual hardship, non-hardships look difficult.
The theory you're describing is "depressive realism". It's hotly contested. In some ways, depressed people can make more accurate assessments, as most people have an optimism bias, but their assessments get unrealistically over-pessimistic as time passes.
> You guys can't imagine any way in which depressions might provide benefits? That's how multiple people in this thread have acted. But maybe, just maybe, people that are depressed have a different perspective on life and maybe feel differently.
Yes, my own experiences with depression in those around me (thankfully not in myself) have left me seeing no way in which depression provides benefits. It is a terrible debilitating disease (or symptom, or whatever it is) that literally saps people of their will to do anything regardless of external stimuli. I find it very hard to imagine something so maladaptive being presented as possibly useful.
I would guess that sentiments like this are the main reason behind the powerful response to your thread. It is almost like claiming that "there is a reason for cancer".
Edit: I would also note that it's possible that we're simply talking past each other, as the term "depression" actually covers some quite different disorders; it's possible that what you're thinking of when you use this word is different from what I'm thinking of - to me, it mostly refers to a disorder where people feel either deeply sad or deeply anxious, but either way they are lacking almost entirely in motivation, finding it hard to even get out of bed sometimes; and all this with little relation to external stimuli.
> 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.
You can proclaim whatever you want, that don't make it true.
> Perhaps someone gets depressed every three months near end of quarter when their hours get cut?
As someone who's been clinically depressed, your examples seem contrived to me. Are they based on any specific evidence, and if so, would you please share with the group?
And the most depressing thing about this is that people with depressions don't wanna hear that their solution is so simple as diet, exercises and lifestyle. Depression comes with existencial crisis and (ironically) excess of entitlement so people think their situation is different, is biological, pathological, spiritual...
It seems intuitive that people with depression are more likely to feel bad in response to X, for all X.
Nonsense. Depressed people are not just sad about everything, and depression affects selfish and unselfish people alike. Trying to derive general laws from shallow stereotypes is likely to compound misconceptions. Doing so to engage in pedantic critiques of a headline while ignoring the rest of the article is just a waste of time for everyone.
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