Written by Kyla sent me this article about the evolutionary origins and benefits of depression and I feel like it’s worth discussing.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depressions-evolutionary
The contention of the study is that depression actually helps you solve your problems and improve your life. I personally disagree with this on an experiential level: whenever I’ve been depressed, I do more running away from my problems than actually trying to solve them. The majority of the people that I would classify as “depressed” either ignore their problems or act like they are unable to solve them, whereas I feel like it takes a certain amount of optimism to actually overcome a hardship and work towards something better.
It seems to me like you have to actually believe that your life can be better and know what a better life would be in order to actually solve the root of one’s depression, but maybe other people here would disagree with me. Thoughts?
Very interesting article.
While I am not so sure about depression directly improving life (especially in the short term), the idea that it helps solve problems makes total sense (through developed thinking skills) and if there is help like therapy, or journal writing as suggested in the article would LEAD to improving life.
Seems like a bit of common sense to me that if there is a bout of depression being fought that “talking it out” some how would help resolve it. I don’t think dwelling on the problem so long that it’s totally taking over your life and that’s all you think about is healthy, but there does seem to be enough usefulness in holding on to the problem long enough for the deep analytical thought to process and develop and be able to be used outside of a depressive state. That’s probably what the therapy is for.
To Sean’s comment about running away from problems: I think the running away and ignoring of the problems is just a quick reaction, that if done long enough the problem, in a sense, fixes itself before you get to the reflective deep thoughts that is mentioned in the article.
Some people will be able to run away/ignore a problem and be able to have it handled, one way or another, fast enough where the deep rooted problems of depression never occur to them. But to others, they might ‘man up’ and face it or be unable to run away from the problem even if they wanted to. At that point they ‘become’ depressed. Depression isn’t just being sad, or bummed out. I think to be depressed you have to reach that point where you’re thinking deeply about it and trying to figure things out.
As far as acting like the problem is unsolvable, I think it’s the social part where we hide, mask, or pad our issues to fit our situation as needed. An example would be telling your friends “omg i cant deal with this im gonna die.” just to turn around and tell your parents “oh its np, i got it under control.” It’s just an act, but in the brain it’s surly being constantly worked on being figured out.
Solving the root of one’s depression isn’t like solving a problem. You can’t just fix a physiological problem with therapy, and short of a miracle from God, journals and medicines will also only curb the symptoms but not make it go away.
I do agree with the idea that depression can be taken care of once there is the belief that life can be better once there is the knowledge of what a better life is.
Perhaps in the long run through the course of depression the learned process of analytical thinking and communicating of ones problems would improve life and obviously help with problems in general. Basically you might not be able to solve your own issues, but you could, more than likely, be able to help others. And if you think about the-rapists isn’t their ability to help others but be totally fucked up themselves what’s joked about?
Maybe the evolutionary parts of this article should read something along the lines that successful handling of depression through social interaction, sharing what’s deeply troubling, and fleshing it out into a solution is why we’ve kept it around. Without it, might be less social, we could be less inclined to help one another. Helping each other sounds genial and rather non-self-serving, but I think it IS self-serving since I won’t have to do the whole work load myself, whether physical or mental.
Your SOL if you depression beat’s you down lawls.
I also wanted to add that the last page is really good.
The first paragraph on the page is spot on, and I really believe the second to be the way to go in helping depressed people overcome the disadvantageous side effects that depression is causing (all in context to this article.) Depression shouldn’t be handled with medicines that affect molecules and receptors, it needs to be communicated and socialized to overcome whatever social ineptness there is, and solve whatever is currently at issue.
The last paragraph is kind of weird. Perhaps a different body part or a better analogy would have been more clear.
I also didn’t read any of the comments on the articles website before, during, or AFTER writing this. Maybe the flames from higher educated people would be amusing, but they’re still probably full of ‘lol ur gay’.
I totally hold GRC and it’s trolls to a higher standard!