The page of the American Psychiatric Association defines depression as:
Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home.
The key word in this sentence is "negatively". In other words feeling "positively" is healthy!? This perception is not only unscientific but also goes contra with the basic tenets of human existence. Life sucks. Everything you see around you has to eat another thing in order to survive. Every single chirp you hear from a bird aims to trick a mate in order for it to get laid. Trying to find the positive in life is like asking someone be happy for losing a leg because now they are 20 pounds lighter. yey diet right? The entirety of existence is based on deception.
Feeling sad or losing interest in activities is also perfectly normal. In fact, given enough time on planet earth (let's call this value "n") you are bound mathematically to lose interest on every single thing that exists. The reason is simple. Once we become familiar with an activity (whether that is a video game, a craft or anything else in between) we become bored. Humans have brains that are designed to make them seek more and more. Unless you have some kind of memory wipe once in a while, you are bound to get bored and withdrawn from whatever you are doing. This is also why the feeble minds are always happier. They can get stuck on autopilot and be rather comfy for being simpletons. This is the same reason children are generally most naive and joly.
This brings us to the next chapter. We sometimes witness some people that are masters in what they do. They keep doing what they are doing non-stop becoming better and better at their craft. These people are rare and one might easily say that nature has gifted them with an obsessive ritualistic behaviour — much like the the behaviours some animals repeat over and over again becoming more and more efficient at it (check your cat for reference). We call these "fixed action patterns" . Again, this is not something to feel awe about but rather something that can produce results in the forms of expertise. This "function" is appreciated socially in our species for obvious reasons. The other thing it can do is numb the mind enough in order to keep you away from feeling sad over long periods of time. This is also why we see many scientists and masters being withdrawn from the praises of society. Their vice (or rather internal drug) is based on this repetition rather than social approval.
The American Psychiatric Association page also lists some symptoms of depression. Let't tear those another asshole as well:
"Feeling sad or having a depressed mood"
Who is the authority to say when sadness becomes an "illness"? But ofcourse the authority of social engineering with absolutely no scientific basis other than analysing DESIRED behaviours over a standard bell curve — Psychology. Whoever bitches and moans for being sad long enough qualifies as "depressed". Pop-pills and acquire a friend on pay-roll so you can "feel good" about yourself. Psychology is not only the substitute for religion. It also invents disorders much like a business invents problems to offer solutions."Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed"
See above"Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting"
Food is a pleasure substance much like everything else. It can fit literally at any occasion whether you are sad or happy. You get the munchies after sex, at the movies or when you lost something and you are substituting that loss with other stimuli. That might be drugs, sex, food or anything else in between. In other words, we all fill the holes somehow when we lose something."Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much"
See above"Loss of energy or increased fatigue"
More like "loss of interest"."Increase in purposeless physical activity (e.g., hand-wringing or pacing) or slowed movements and speech (actions observable by others)"
Since you are being useless, the body fills the gaps with extra moves. Kids do the same when they are bored sitting on a chair, rocking their feet because mom told them to sit tight. Best case scenario, this "pacing" is rather the feeling of being bossed from life itself, surrendering. Instead of fighting and acting freely, you puss out and play with yourself. Literally."Feeling worthless or guilty"
Bingo — And this is the main point. The depressed person feels sad because they pretty much suck at something (or many things). Someone is doing it better than them. Usually depressed people are those who extensively compare themselves to others. They are highly insecure individuals. Remember. In our time and age most people are other people. Many people feel depressed because they have become a bad copy of someone else (or at best) they dedicated their lives on social memes that others have created for them. They are always trailing as parrots or bad copies. Then, when they do finally find themselves thinking about the "original" from which they copied from — then suddenly the mirror in their room becomes all too real."Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions"
When you find yourself being sad because you basically lost your copy-pasta character you cannot think for yourself. Your identity is literally borrowing from somewhere else. You cannot concentrate or make decisions because all your actions have been dependent or deriving not from within you but as proxy to an external stimuli. Your body strives to reset you back to reality and is saying to you "Stop being a copy of someone else. Utilize your genetic variation in order to shine. Stop copying and measuring yourself to others. Stop being a pathetic douchebag. You can't even stand being you"."Thoughts of death or suicide"
And of course once you do realize that everything is pointless because you lost way too many times at the game of life you are taking out yourself from the equation. Nature effectively renders you obsolete in order for more suitable genes to take place. Evolution has crafted many mechanisms for propagating the fittest and most adaptable. Suicide is just another way.For the sake of the argument, let's assume that some individuals do indeed go through some fucked up shit and become depressed. In fact, if we are rational on the subject, we will soon realize that every single human that lived just 100.000 years ago went through some serious "fucked up depressive shit", that they inherited generation after generation after generation. Considering the harhness and brutalities of daily life, we should all be highly dysfunctional thousands years ago. Yet, most of us seem to pull through even if they are "sad for an extended period of time". (aka depressed). Again, the argument of "depression" doesn't hold. When you live in an era where people get their hands chopped off regularly you do not get depressed for losing your hand.
Depression is not an illness. Depression is a meme word invented by a school of thought called "Psychology". There are no tests that prove you are depressed. There are no exams you can take. You can easily fake the behavior or worse, BELIEVE you are depressed and your plastic brain will even start producing patterns that resemble other "depressed" people. Viva la pseudo-science.
More and more people today are appearing as "depressed" because they hear about it. Most of them are grown- up children who deny to grow up and accept and harshness of life. I speak with such raw words because I have been through some pretty fucked up shit and I did feel sad for losing parts of my life. After that though I did not put the burden on society to clean up after me. I didn't have to "come out" like a "closet X" and become at attention whore for feelings.
People are going to judge you whether you are gay, depressed, bold, short or handicapped. Finding other desperate like you and forming self-help groupie thingies are not going to help you get through life. They are most likely going to make you more dysfunctional and attract you to people that believe your meme whether that is "depression" or the belief that "pumpkin" is a gender pronoun. At best you can utilize this meme politically and become a burden to everyone else because you feel like a fucking unique snowflake. Remember. Truth exists based on democracy. Convince enough people and anything goes.
This is how "depression" came to be a thing —when in fact— the old-timers had it right. When they realised that grief could not go for long they forced you to man up, suck it up and move on. Today instead of reinforcing to conquer the reality of life we succumb to it and desire others to hold our hand and sing kumbaya. We are hasty to label anything that we do not like a "trauma" and seek a "medicine" for it.
As for the "it is treatable" part, this does not imply that someone can treat it. When a dog can be a better "psychologist" for treating depression you can kiss your "science" part goodbye. When a theory cannot be falsified you can kiss the "science" part goodbye. And when science is out of the window what you have left is silly people believing made up things. Like I said above. A religion. Something to cope with the hardness of life.
If Depression was indeed an illness that affect the human body then we would see it across all civilisations, across history. We would observe it in the same patterns in non-western cultures such as in the tribes of Western Africa, Amazon, or the Northern Territory of Australia. But we don't. Depression Is a Disease of Civilization not of the human physiology. In much the same way, being possessed from the devil was a social meme back in the day when religion was culturally popular. Based on population one could easily categorize being possessed as an illness. As far as the "science" goes in regards to detecting and curing depression and the nature of being possessed, the methodology is identical. What changes is the narrative.
Would you take a medicine against cholesterol that has the chance to increase your cholesterol? When antidepressants kill hundreds of thousands of people every year and their side effects include "suicide behaviour" and "depression", sorry but you are being a moron for taking them. It sucks being sad. Suck it up and move on. A therapist brainwashing your into being a happily deluded autobot is not a solution. You are better off killing yourself. There is nothing wrong with suicide.
I have to say I thoroughly disagree with you on this one. In fact, regarding the beginning of the post I could not tell if you were being deliberately obtuse to make your point. The "loss of interest" that one experiences during depression is not a simple "getting bored of your hobbies" kind of thing. It is some weird, persisting feeling of anhedonia, where not only your hobbies, but the touch of your significant other, the company of your friends and even your favorite food are things you don't really react to or even look forward to anymore; you can be at the world's best party and you feel like you are in this weird numbing bubble looking at things as an outsider. You find yourself randomly tearing up through the day and waking up wishing you hadn't.
And regarding the "lack of energy" it's real: depression usually comes accompanied by anxiety, which can cause your body to basically be stuck on "fight or flight" mechanism on a chronic basis, which wears you off physically (at my worst I even remember waking up regularly with a really sore jaw because I clenched my teeth so hard during my sleep).
That was my personal experience. And I didn't go through it as some sort of reaction to my noticing that I was being unauthentic or not unique enough, or whatever you are trying to suggest up there. In fact, I am pretty much still the same person I was pre-depression.
It wasn't triggered by nonconformity with my friends, SO, or preferred activities either, since once I managed to get better I went back to do the same stuff I did before, but this time everything was normal again. My depression was just triggered by a shit ton of suffering delivered at once that proved to be too much for my poor little brain.
The only thing that has changed is that some of the aggravating circumstances stabilized a bit over time, and I have slowly learned better mechanisms to make things bearable and keeping myself functional.
When I got depressed, I didn't decide to "get sad" to win some sympathy. I was/am not looking to join the victimization Olympics and if there was a way to magically get rid of this feeling immediately, I would take it. Feeling that your brain is broken is one of the worst things you can experience, trust me. But I guess you cannot really know until you experience it and honestly is something I don't wish upon anyone.
Sorry about the novel, but I obviously feel very strongly about this. Having your suffering trivialized is not an easy thing to accept.
You do have a point about how people have become increasingly mentally softer, but depression really shouldn't be brushed off as a "meme word". Every mind has a different threshold. Sure, life was harder back in the day, and hence our forefathers were more mentally conditioned. Life has gotten much easier since then, and we evolved accordingly.Some get over grief easily, some take longer while some just go completely downhill. Not everyone can just "man up" and deal with it. You should understand that all of us are wired differently, and try to understand and accommodate the differences rather than denigrate them. Depression is very real, and every single person has or will experience it for varying periods of time. How each person deals with it is what makes the difference. And unlike you seem to think so, depression actually has a very strong scientific foundation. It changes your brain chemistry. I suggest you do some more reading about it! :). Also, you honestly just sound quite miserable by telling people that they are "better off killing themselves". And miserable is kind of a byproduct of depression itself (ironically). Develop some empathy man. Seriously.
Yes, yes, YES!
Regarding this, in a way I can definitely agree that depression is some sort of luxury condition that usually only takes place once your basic needs (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs) have been met. When your brain power is not almost completely occupied in survival mode, then the gates for emotional and psychological suffering open. This is why depression is so prevalent in developed countries, while poorer countries that objectively would seem to have a lot more reasons to feel depressed (like in the hand-chopping scenario @kyriacos described) it is almost unheard of.
Definitely. Worse: your brain gets rewired in this "negative setting" and it takes a lot of effort to cultivate the good circuits again.
Great comment, @belpheg0r!
You admit then that depression is a social construct and has nothing to do with the fact of being a homo-sapien.
oh and by the way
Wrote a piece in the past about this. Depression is a disease of civilisation, not a human illness.
There is no test you take for depression. There is no medicine you can take and cure you.
There is no such thing as "normal" brain chemistry. We all have different physiology. When you read about studies referring to depression they examine the ones complaining about depression vs the ones who don't. This is a generic problem with medicine. Add to that the fact that if you believe you have a certain disease you start acting like it and science of fMRI goes out of the window.
I did do a lot of reading about it don't worry.
Honestly, that's a very juvenile argument. Most of the mental illnesses don't have a sure shot test or a medicine that cures you 100%. That doesn't make the illness "made up", it just shows how complex the brain and it's chemistry is. Besides, on what basis are you challenging established medical evidence? Besides your seemingly pure contempt for mentally "weak" people, I really don't see you countering anything with any science to back it up.
Good jop
I don't remember but read somewhere that Depression is going to become the top ranked disease in the world in coming times... :/
When anybody can call anything a disease it can rank as one wishes.
Great text... A lot of good points... I am going to kill myself now ;)
When antidepressants kill hundreds of thousands of people every year
Oddly enough almost EVERY ONE of the mass shooters have been on anti-depressants.
Perhaps it also causes berserker rages?
in fact. No single person knows exactly what they cause because they are highly unscientific. They produce them on the fly, throwing shit in the recipe based on whim.
Great topic you discussed @kyriacos. Major depressive disorder is a common and serious medical illness. It would be weakness our activities, attitudes, working facilities also. But we are fortunate yet. Its can treatable. Depression causes is huge problem for society. I think more stress is increase Depression causes. However The entire of existence was based on deception. Its real concept. These compare with basic tenets of human existence.Defensively we`ll go forward....Thats will be scientific issue probably. More of matching theory indeed. Must read past tense books mathcing this concepts. Psychological treatment be import for good treat method. Drinking, smoking not suitable under this fact.
Absolutely great conversation @kyriacos.
Resteemed.
it is a common meme. Doesn't mean it is an illness just because an authority says it is.
Mental "Illness" in general is a myth.
yes
Great info here, More folks suffer from depression than we realize. It is not cool to talk about it bit we need to. So many hide their true emotions and go around like zombies. There are so many things in this old world to make us depressed. I think that the dark powers that be works hard to defuse us through depression. This is part of the spiritual battle of good and evil. We need to strive even harder to overpower those forces in our life ...to defeat depression. Thanks for a wonderful post my friend.
Quality read ! Will definitely follow !
Nice reference to Popper in terms of "falsification" . I agree it does suck to be sad , however prior to sucking it up there does need to be a moment of this sucks and I am gonna confront it and deal with it. Once that is done you can get back to "normal" life. If you get stuck in that phase your friends will get bored of it but they wont tell you , they will just stop calling !
Yeap, this is why depression is an epidemic in the western world and not across the entirety of the human species. For the very reasons I mentioned. It is a cultural meme.
Because it's not universal it doesn't mean it is not an illness. You lost a logic there. There are psychiatric ilnesses which are culturally specific.
You have probably not seen depression, the clinical state, up close. Severe forms of depression are debilitating and in many cases responsive to medication.
I have. My mom claimed to be suffered from it. Again. extensive periods of sadness.
You are absolutely correct in saying that we are always being judged for being different from others. All I can say life is too short not to be happy.
No matter what happens in your life all we can do is take it one day at a time you have my upvote
My grandfather who fought in war against Nazi Germany as an adolescent and experienced what nowadays would be considered as major traumata, told me that in the Soviet Union the diagnosis of depression was unknown. And that despite millions of killed dear ones, torn apart families, devastated infrastructure.
Back in the day, people had to suck it up and deal with the problems and the still existing social community bonds certainly provided support.
I feel that clinical depression is a problem of luxury. First, giving a name to a psychological state, that deviates from the norm, devolves responsibility from the subject and this is only exacerbated by providing the subject with pills that supposedly "fix" the problem.
Secondly, nowadays, most Western people do not have to deal with existential threats for survival. Humans 20,000 years ago did not have the chance to develop "depression" - either they solved the problem at hand or they died.
Today, we have many life problems whose (non-)resolution will not alter our survival chances. This leaves us room to develop and dive into extreme emotional states. We often have too much time at hand. The young generation, especially, does not know how to deal with adversities, since their parents have given up on letting their children grow up with restrictions, instructions, principles and values.
Facing adversities, lacking the means to deal with them, not having a strong and independent will to acquire those, in conjunction with doctors and psychologists having learned to characterize prolonged grief and sadness as depression and the availability of antidepressants, certainly let the diagnosis of depression flourish.
That said, I would never take antidepressants myself: because they mess with your neural wiring in unforeseeable manners and they are neither treating the underlying cause nor the symptoms.
I have a friend who allegedly suffered from a sudden episode of major depression because he felt (his own words) like a loser when he started comparing himself to his girlfriend (who wanted to marry him). The doctors saw themselves forced to treat him with drugs to get him out of his extremely apathetic state. Although that brought him back to "normality", the drugs induced a series of subsequent manic-depressive episodes, him gaining weight, having constantly shaking hands... A disaster.