Human Depression

edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/02/lkl.01.html
I’m including this site here because it deals with depression. I’ve admired Candice Pert, neuroscientist, since the 1980s. It appears that she has gotten into what some might call “New Wave.” The crux of the conversation is that depression is a habit.

Quite. Just asking.

Will anybody take the time to read the short transcript? It covers a lot of what has been said here.

Hoo Ha! don’t you mean, has anyone scientifically sanctified a vinegar cure for arthritic pains?

Come on, Calrid, if something works for someone, is it really important to know why? You know that ‘phantom’ pain can be present in a severed limb. Leave it alone.

I didn’t read the whole transcript nor know what has been said here, but the idea that depression is a habit, something that we’re emotionally addicted to, is quite interesting.

Yes because it might work for others. It’s important to trial it to see its efficacy otherwise we might as well just give everyone placebos and hope they get better through the power of suggestion. And of course since vinegar is readily available, it wont get trialled by anything but a charity because there’s no money in it, but that’s by the by. :slight_smile:

If it works for you anecdotally then it just works is no way to help the millions of sufferers out there who could benefit if it was effectively studied.

I know it sounds odd, but not all Science is evil, just my science to create a bomb that will destroy the whole solar system, but then one has to make ends meet by holding the world to ransom for 1 million billion dollars or what have you.

For the past 20 years Candice Pert, co-discoverer of endorphins (endogenous morphine) has mapped these and their receptors in the brain. This is another hint at solving the addiction/habit problem, at least on the level of neuroscientific investigations. Some 20 years before that Donald Hebb noted that frequently used neuronal communication pathways become almost automatic. Putting the two together, one can see how memory and emotion join together in a habitual manner that bypasses most of the prefrontal, left brain anaylses–i.e., where logical choices are made. Depression, in this vein, becomes a memory/emotion habit.

If only it were that simple, then good therapy would always be effective on its own.

I can’t say it isn’t. In any event Skepitco rakes Pert over to coals for wandering into territories of ideas that are not “scientifically verifiable”. One again, left brain, prefrontal lobe logic makes the claim that it is sole arbiter of truth about body/mind.

There’s no part of the brain that isn’t involved in logic, except perhaps Shatner’s Bassoon.

Why?

Pert goes so far as to relegate consciousness to every body cell!

Because good therapy does not work as well as good therapy and/or drugs, at least for most people, yo break someone out of a cycle by words alone, then try doing it when they have drugs too or just drugs alone, get back to me on that one. Some science would be nice…

Everyone has a theory that it’s all just habit or it’s all just brain chemistry, or it’s all just environment or it’s all just what? But let me tell you this, I know some pretty smart people in the field with PhD’s and the last thing they would do is claim it’s solved, trite or down to x or y, or for that matter the whole alphabet! Friend of mine says they’re no closer to finding a solution to depression than they ever were, all that is happening is that they are narrowing down on the people it happens to and why, and that focus is so diverse that it will take a long time to figure out exactly what depression is.

Everyone has the answer, try suffering from it. Get back to me when you’ve walked a mile in everyone’s ferking shoes, ffs. :slight_smile:

By the way no one would like to see a cure for the blues more than me, but I get kinda tired of people making blanket statements about a complex field and one they know generally nothing about. Think on. :slight_smile:
To sum up, there are no easy answers in science, anyone who claims there is, is either a fraud a quack or a layman. O:)

Why?
[/quote]

Can you back this up?

I am asking you about your assertion.

I still don’t see why if what he said was true about depression would mean that therapy would always be effective on its own. His statement does not indicate how easy or hard it is to change these patterns. Nor does depression being based on emotional habits and memory mean that drugs would or would not aid added to or instead of talk therapy.

I don’t understand why you are aiming this at me. It makes no sense. What is it about what I have written that this makes sense as a response to?

I work in the field. I consider your statement to be facile and confused and that is why I am asking you about it. i don’t think your assertion makes any sense, actually, but I am trying to find out more of why you believe it.

By the way, there are easy answers in science. Some things have rather simple explanations. I tend to think this is not the case with psychoemotional issues, but given that the words emotional habits and memories are abstract terms for incredibly complex phenomena, to say these are the root of depression is not offering a simple answer, nor does it make clear what kind of therapeutic approaches will work.

moreno is asking some good questions…
i hope there are some good answers…

What are you his mum. :wink:

Going to watch a movie in a few mins. Have to get back to it when time allows… :stuck_out_tongue:

@moreno: why do people insist on splitting points up until they become meaningless and lose context? I think you need to read what I said again, I said and or, it’s important. If you agree with and or, you are saying you are in none of the camps, drugs alone, therapy alone, or drug and therapy. Which is probably the wisest place to be, given how broad the subject is.

Ok gonna make this simple, I do not think calling all forms of depression habit is apt, the word is hopelessly blunt and could lead to confusion.

For example would you use that term for depression caused by brain damage such as in stroke victims? If so why, and how would you couch it so that you didn’t infer that patients became trapped in the sorts of self reinforcing cycles we talk about with “purely” psychological depression if there is a such a thing.

In other words blanket terms like habit are only useful in describing some types of depression not the complete spectrum of mood disorders. If you meant only to include depressive disorders of some types then say you are talking about some disorders not all.

I don’t need to know if you are Head of Psychology at the World Institute of Tefal Heads.

Just cite your sources, this is a philosophy forum not a medical journal, your credentials are superfluous.

[tab]why is Shatner’s Bassoon inherently funny to me? I must start a thread on inherently funny words… Memo to self.[/tab]

i was impressed that moreno was in the field…
trying to diagnose human depression is a can of worms…

zzzz.

I was an athlete in college. 2 a day practices. Games. Tournaments. Etc. I ate awesome. Had sex often. Physically I felt super. Physically.

I still had depression. I mean none of all of that changed the fact that we live in a society that, when you look at it, should produce depression, because it is an aberrant environment that promotes psychopathic values. There is literally no good aspect to our society except for maybe… smartphones. We’re heading to what looks like a death for our species, and everyone is in a fucking brainwashed coma. I find it hard to understand how anyone could be happy, given that.

I find it truly confusing the people that can just go out into that, work 8-10 hours a day for nothing that benefits them (except for their wage slave cheque) and then come home and be happy—some joy at some intoxication event on the weekend that will sedate them for a couple hours. Enough to start the week again. I don’t see that as happiness. I see that as delusion that people fight me to hang onto. That is, the subconscious belief that in so looking away from the parade of passing shadows on the wall, an individual runs the risk of falling into the depression i have so described.

It’s fucking pathetic. Really. Or at least, I’m pathetic. I have this theory that the smarter/more aware you are, the more you are depressed. Some of us have the ability to transmute the immense suffering into something positive, but, I for one usually just rant on philosophy boards.

AF-----it isnt only the world out there but our own private little hells…my hell is people dying…me dying…that is depressing…but death at the right time might be a good release from this hell on earth…