Human Depression

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
21

Depression comes in 3 basic forms; physiological, emotional, and cognitive. “Depression” is the label given to the “urge to give up”, to not act even when actions are available. The medical world defines depression as a state wherein a person retreats from “normal activity” for that person (much less definitive). The underlying cause of depression in all cases is the futilization of positive response.

Oppression often leads to depression whereas suppression offend leads to aggression (opposite of depression). The depressive state neither loves nor hates, but rather stops caring and insists in not caring. Depression is not merely the loss of hope, but the acceptance in the hope of retreating, “shutting down”, “giving up”. The urge to withdraw completely is what leads to suicidal depression. Suicide is the overt act to withdraw from all life entirely.

Biochemicals and drugs can help most with physiological depression wherein the body refuses to respond normally under normal stimuli. Exercise, increased bodily fluid flow, and a medically clean environment help most against physiological depression. Proper levels of vitamins and minerals can help if they happen to have become abnormal. This level of depression is classified as “disease” (dis-ease) and is generally caused by invasion of toxins or germs. Physiological depression is almost never caused genetically despite family history. More often the family merely experiences the same invasive affects, often from the same sources (environmental or social).

Drugs effect emotional depression through a complex reaction process where the feelings and emotors are medically tweaked until they mask the cause of the depression sufficiently to simulate normal behavior (what is assessed as such anyway). A strong change in life situation can greatly effect a depressive state, but the person will seldom choose to pursue such a change. Strong love or hate interests can jar the emotional state into seeing new hope in taking action. But if such changing in life are introduced and do not succeed, they instead further aid the depression. Emotional and cognitive depressions are never caused genetically regardless of family history.

Biochemicals and drugs have no effect on cognitive depression unless they have positive (or negative) effect on mental functions such as memory, attention, focus, concentration, analytical response, and so on. Nootropics aid in that regard. The cognitively perceived situation of the person is the cause of cognitive depression thus anything that appears to the person to yield hope in the person’s situation works against cognitive depression (winning the lottery for example if money is an recognized issue).

Signs of each type of depression vary from each other. Some people have various degrees of each type. Each type affects each other type, but does not directly determine them. People sufficiently skilled to properly diagnose depression (or just about any psychological ailment) are difficult to find. This is largely due to the attempt to over simplify the mental state and assign labels through symptomology rather than addressing causes.

Social and economic depression are additional depression types caused by analogous affecters. These are most often brought about (along with personal depressions) as governments change hands or restructure. Futilizing the people’s effort to maintain their own safety is a critical part of re-ording a society, thus the people sense and often recognized the hopelessness of their situation. Suicides rise sharply as social demonism is injected so as to make clay by crushing the former statue for sake of the new statue. In the West, the more recent change (“paradigm shift”) came about as Christianity was replaced with Judeo-secularism for sake of world governing.

In all cases, depression is the result of the actions of others and is seldom remedied except by the same.

22

There is some contention over the claim that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Is the depression caused by imbalanced chemicals (neurotransmitters), or does being depressed cause this imbalance? What if depression is “caused” more by one’s personal experiences and learned emotional coping strategies, and because we feel depressed as a result of less than ideal interaction with conditions in our environments this in turn causes an “imbalance” in the brain’s neurotransmitters?

23

“I think” is the perfect way for you to start this statement, as it’s obviously just your opinion and is proven to be untrue. There are people who suffer from different “mental illnesses” their entire lives. Something like bi-polar disorder doesn’t just go away when a person “grows up”.

Fucking duh.

24

I don’t think the onus was on you. I label clinical depression as a mental illness because clinical depression is called a mental illness by physicians. And not all illnesses have a cure.

The drugs used to correct a chemical imbalance aren’t addictive, no, but I’m not sure what you mean by altering mental functions. One is able to think and interact the same way they always were, but there is a decided change in mood, and this change alters everything – the way we look at the world, think about the world, respond to any given situation, etc.

The difference is as I stated above. When I was medicated I was numb. I was never sad, but I was never happy either. I was even-tempered all the time. I couldn’t write or sketch anymore because I had no emotions, nothing to tap into. I never had the desire to break into song. I never soared to unbelievable heights of excitement the way I did before I took the meds. A smile on my face was not a sign of happiness, it was just me giving an expected reaction so others wouldn’t think I was indifferent – though I was. Totally indifferent to everything. Numbed from the inside out. I would rather experience the crash and burn after soaring than to never fly at all.

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At least drugs actually directly see to the depression, even if they are not good in the long term and do not cure it. Depression is mainly chemical as well, so no matter how good our life is you will fail to raise that mood. That’s how it works.

And I don’t know where you get the idea about growing out of it. Many people only have depression quite late in life rather than earlier on in it. EG Women who get post natal depression.

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*how good YOUR life is. Your life.

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Chee I don’t understand what you are writing here.

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That is a prime reason for not playing with the brain. The mind/brain combination is already wired to attempt a causal association with all activities in order to discern hope or threat. When the wiring (the chemistry) is modified in an attempt to force a conclusion or decision, the mind can no longer function to isolate cause and effect. Similar things happen when a computer is troubleshot by toying with the circuitry or the software without regard to the architectural needs of the other. Either can cause the emotional depression. Cognitive depression is entirely conscious, thus chemical imbalances only affect the outcome when they cause inabilities that are seen by the person. Physiological depression can be caused by any of the above.

The best resolution to depression is most often to let the mind workout how to handle life without the use of drugs. The exception is only when a specific chemical cause can be identified and chemically correct for. The general use of mind altering psychoactive drugs causes the inability for a mind to correlate cause and effect (because the game keeps changing) and thus not be able to think rationally.

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That describes everyone’s life. Depression is being miserable while living a life that others would evaluate as great, good or at least okay.

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So people struggle for years, eventually spiraling down to failure and suicide. They would be better off with meds.

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They would be better off with people understanding the persons real-life situation and actually helping for a change. Meds not required.

32

absolutely phyllo. sometimes the suffering is so great I would take drugs and shock treatments to avoid death.

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Helping how? With years of expensive psychotherapy? Are you saying that meds are never the appropriate treatment?

34

Sorry maaaaaan, it was a correction of my previous post to Jonquerz.

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I have direct experience with years of helping people out of their seemingly helpless situation. The very first thing that happens, is that all psychoactive medications come to a stop. What immediately replaces that band aid mind blinding medications is actual real hope. I, all alone, provided shelter, security, food, incentive, education, communication, transportation, jobs, and an understanding of how to live against the horde of social and psychological depressors in their new-age world. I merely provided them with real hope. All addictions, all depressive notions, and most hatred left them entirely in a matter of a few months worst case. But after returning to long exposure to that same world, they often fell back. At that time, I hadn’t taken on the challenge of permanent cures against the new world oppression. Today would be a different story. Do things right and medications have very little use. I already mentioned the only times they are appropriate.

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jss any suicides?

Did you practice psychiatry?

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I was “the Anti-suicide” of my time. A few had taken steps in that direction before I had met them. I gave them a choice, throw it all away, or throw it into my hands for a while. They now include a professor in IT (pulling in over $100k with extra benefits), a PhD in Social Science, and many others with less prestigious skills, but all went to college, via me. All made good grades. All are better off today than they were when I met them (an insistence upon myself). Perhaps more importantly, despite their later setbacks, I suspect they are all happier today than before I met them. And STILL no MEDS.

38

You all are speaking about depression/depressed people as if you’re looking in from the outside. It’s very easy to talk about something you’ve never experienced, but talk doesn’t make you knowledgeable.

Everyone experiences depression at some point or another, but for those of us who have a chemical imbalance and have to live with it everyday, things aren’t so cut and dried as they seem to be for you. You just don’t understand until you live it. People who loved me watched me go through the lowest the point of my life, and they wanted so badly to help, but there was nothing they could do. Chemical imbalance combined with (or as a result of) some pretty horrible things that had happened in my childhood was a pretty potent mix, and in the end the only person able to pull me back from the brink of suicide was myself.

I’ve also seen first-hand what happens to someone who REALLY NEEDS those drugs when they go off of them. I watched my ex boyfriend literally lose his fucking mind, and there was nothing he could do. He knew it was happening, he knew where his obsessively paranoid behaviors and outbursts of rage were heading, but without medication he was helpless. Sometimes, such as in my case, the drugs are enough to help one get their head on straight, and then they don’t really need them to function, but that is not always the case.

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There is very little need for psychiatry when you understand psychology properly. Psychiatry is soon to be replaced with neuroscience anyway. I earned my masters in psychology in '76, but learned how the mind worked much later.

40

Let me clarify. YOU didn’t do anything, JSS, but provide an opportunity. Their successes are not your successes.