Human Depression

Why?
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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…

I agree that the “Camps” of all drug, all talk therapy and drugs plus talk therapy can either be effective or ineffective. The “a priori” info. in the brain is emotional, not logical. Logic is “a posteriori” info. That being said, we must understand that the purpose of having a brain is to establish homeostasis of function of all somatic systems. That purpose is affected by genetic/epigentic/somatic sources of possible information. What Pert is exploring is that neuroplasticity and epigenetics allow a certain leeway in which “positive” thinking can affect “negative” brains physically. This would make sense only to those who agree that mind is physical.
IMHO, the brain’s feedback, information loops can get caught up in cycled/recyled habits. In any event, the problem of depression as habit is not a simple one. It has something to do with the pleasure and pain centers in the brain, with emotional thinking and with what information genetics and societies allow .

Interesting pain/pleasure, how would depression grow in evolutionary terms from feedback form very primitive pain/pleasure centres? I’m not questioning your post, just saying that it would probably be a valid area of research. A fresh approach to depression is always needed. But I have to ask why you came up with that out of the blue? Because I like Ideas out of the blue. :slight_smile:

Usually they don’t concentrate on very old systems for depression, because animals that are close to us on the evolutionary scale don’t tend to suffer from it quite so much, so they tend to look into higher brain function as the cause, in psychological cases this is obviously very pertinent…

Why is it that, for depressives, all roads lead to depression; yet all roads are different?

Because the steering mechanism is faulty, causing the depressive (at least in psychological disorders) to be more likely to take turns that are detrimental to their condition and ignore better ones, eventually leading in circles.

can psychoanalysis help a depressive person lead a less depressed life?

All mammals have and display emotions. They are displayed within the hard-wired parameters of social position and time as immediate. The former offers an animal certainty and security. The latter offers mental focus for immediate dangers.
Chimps, who share 97% of our human DNA, do not have our development of a large prefrontal cortex. That development gives our “minds” senses of insecurity and uncertainty. It may be the root cause of our depression and creativity. Check out animals in zoos to see depression as denial of feral expressions.
The pleasure/pain concept is from Freud.

My gut feeling is that it is a poor approach for depressed people. It takes an incredibly long time - I am speaking here of traditional Freudian psychoanalysis - and literally has the person lying down, mulling over their problems. Lying down, mulling over one’s problems is a habit not worth reinforcing in depressed people. I am sure it has worked for some, but I would lay money on it that it does less well that more actively dynamic talk therapies, CBTs and drug therapies.

Moreno,
I agree, but plead ignorance as to what CBTs are. Active one on one talk therapy has gotten me out of many maelstroms of depression, since for me at least depression appears to be a withdrawal into self and the talk therapy shows a wider range of possibilites. It’s a matter of being presuaded that I am not a victim and that my anger may be justified.

cognitive behavioral therapies - which can be considered talk therapies and certainly are when contrasted with drug approaches. Agree with the withdrawel into the self facet. I think depression is a loss of flow, a loss of flexibility and dynamism, and a kind of psyhoemotional isometric lockdown. Which is why things like exercise and dynamic talk therapies both work for some people.

i was not talking about freudian psychoanalysis which is flawed…i am talking about an educational experience where a person learns about their unique self…

Yes therapy can work, I am sure of it. But the problem is that it has to be done well. As Moreno says just recounting your life and where you went wrong isn’t helpful in itself. I have no idea how to cure a depressive who is inured to his depression, but CBT is definitely of use because it focuses on freeing the patient of cyclical thinking, ie the things that make them depressed, it tries to resolve paradoxes that the depressive think exists, to put his worries in an objective sense as well as then analysing the subjective case. I wouldn’t discount it. Long term depression, where the patient has been either untreated or treated badly by the field, is probably so tough to resolve that it becomes impossible to define a good strategy CBT or otherwise, without experiment. A decent psychologist if he hasn’t gone mad by the time he reaches 40 does not offer salvation, but acts as a springboard, suggesting things that might help, that the patient might want to consider, offering successes and failures in other cases. I think most psychologists experience a great deal of failure, I think you have to be extremely mentally strong to begin with to even have a chance of doing well. Undoubtedly this field though is much more art than science.

I’m not talking about the cycle of thinking and rethinking about what depresses a depressive. I’m talking about the depressive who can be filled with joie de vivre one day, and not want to get up the next. That depression has many starting points but always one end point–depression. The energy that was there yesterday has disappeared–vanished into somewhere–the ether? Who knows?

I’ve gone through group therapy, one-on-one talk therapy, therapy by both psychiatrists and psychologists. Only one thing has taken the edge off the depression–drugs. Even then, the drug often only takes the edge off and makes me easier to live with. I no longer respond to tension with anger and lashing out. But I still react to tension–with intensity. Sometimes that intensity overrides the electro- mechanical brain implants I have to control tremor and I start shaking all over.

So, for me, there are lots of roads that lead to one destination.

“Unique self”–that cuts both ways. In my worst episodes there appears to be a total disconnect between myself and what is Other. Loneliness looks though a singular set of eyes in horror at the me-ness of my existence. I’ll retell the old joke–“You’re unique, just like everyone else!”