Should You Take Antidepressants? Dr. Irving Kirsch, a professor at The University of Hull, has caused a stir lately with a body of research suggesting that SSRIs , the most common class of antidepressant, are no better than placebos. (Here is a story about his findings.) Of course, for every SSRI skeptic there are any number of evangelists who swear by the drugs . Personally, I'm undecided. I've seen SSRIs aggravate depression by muting happy emotions and adding unpleasant side-effects, while offering no measurable antidepressant effect.
For anyone considering antidepressants, I would humbly suggest that the question, , is the wrong question. The SSRI debate is useful in general, but it is mostly irrelevant to individual cases. If I found a mechanic who insisted on rebuilding every transmission (or who reflexively opposed it) I would find a new mechanic, pronto. It seems to me that our central nervous systems should get at least as much respect as our cars. But don't take my word for it. {*style:<b>References Dr. Is Minor Depression Minor? Someone is dogged by a bad mood that they just can't shake for a month or two. Is it a big deal? Isn't some suffering expected in this universe? If someone is distressed and impaired by low grade depressive symptoms, how seriously should we take their complaints? Scholars like Jerome Wakefield and Allan Horwitz are concerned that our diagnostic system has transformed normal sorrow into a psychiatric disorder.
By taking minor depression seriously, are we paying homage to the worried well? So far the fields of psychology and psychiatry have largely overlooked minor depression . The amount we know about it is dwarfed by what we know about major depression. Here are four reasons why you should care about minor depression. In 2001, Mark Hegel and his colleagues studied patients in New Hampshire who went to their primary care doctor. Much to Hegel's surprise, only about 1 in 10 of these patients with minor depression got better in a month's time. . . .
References Allan V. Mark T. Flourishing After Depression: How What We Don't Know Hurts Us. The long run outcome of deep depression is typically cruel: Depression leaves a dull hangover of residual symptoms in its wake. Episodes of deep depression are prone to recur. Yet a subgroup of sufferers beats these odds. Why do some experience a glorious recovery from depression , achieving positive mental health for long periods, even appearing armored against depression's return?
The short answer is that we don't know. Strangely, researchers have rarely addressed why it is that some people experience uniquely good outcomes. I have been wondering: is it that we know so little about this important topic? (If you locate any research studies, please let me know!) My suspicion is that we don't know about these things for good reason: something has constricted our research imagination. Our constricted view of recovery makes a certain amount of sense given the assumptions of the model. Did you flourish after depression? Write me with your story at chartingthedepths@gmail.com. How Does Depression Start? For all the vast research we have on depression , with millions spent on genotyping, brain scans, and intervention studies, I have discovered a massive and most embarrassing hole in our knowledge. Usually when we want to understand a serious problem, say, an airline accident, we start at the beginning. An investigator will want to inspect maintenance records and analyze data from the flight recorder.
He or she will establish a detailed timeline. A critical mark on this timeline is the first sign of something unusual. Often the eventual outcome --the plane slamming into a mountainside-- comes at the end of a chain of unfortunate events (i.e., the weather is bad, the pilots are unfamiliar with new traffic control rules, the tower miscommunicates at a critical moment in the flight). It seems reasonable to apply the methods of accident investigation to depression. It turns out that we know almost nothing about the depressive prodrome. This study offers promising leads for future work. Positive effects of depression. Public release date: 4-May-2011 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Michael P.
Griffinmgriffin@clarkson.edu 315-268-6716Clarkson University Sadness, apathy, preoccupation. These traits come to mind when people think about depression, the world's most frequently diagnosed mental disorder. Yet, forthcoming research in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology provides evidence that depression has a positive side-effect. According to a new study by Bettina von Helversen (University of Basel, Switzerland), Andreas Wilke (Clarkson University), Tim Johnson (Stanford University), Gabriele Schmid (Technische Universität München, Germany), and Burghard Klapp (Charité Hospital Berlin, Germany), depressed individuals perform better than their non-depressed peers in sequential decision tasks. The game assigned each applicant a monetary value and presented applicants one-at-a-time in random order. This discovery provides the first evidence that clinical depression may carry some benefits.
Why Do Depressed People Lie in Bed? If you've personally suffered from depression or known someone who has, you know that when people are really depressed, they have a strong urge to stay in bed. Why do depressed people lie in bed? It isn't because of great snuggle time under the blankets. It's because depressed people can't bring themselves to get of bed. Almost any activity or task becomes a painful ordeal, even things as simple as taking a shower or getting dressed. Beds are the location in the house most associated with inactivity A perfectly able-bodied person can't bring him or herself to rise out of bed. The intuitive answer is that a lack of motivation is to blame. The intuitive answer is okay as far as it goes. First, we have to detour to contemporary evolutionary psychology , which tells us that moods have a function: Moods help us pursue goals efficiently. These relationships between moods, goal, and effort hold for a variety of species.
So this alternative theory turns the standard explanation on its head. Can You Think Your Way Out of a Depression? Whether it's advanced language, ability to reflect upon the past and plan for the future, or our access to a rich shared culture, our unique human traits are usually a source of pride. But, in my last post, I explored the riddle of rising depression in humans . It seems that the same capabilities that enable our species to harness fire and put a man on the moon lead to self-defeating efforts to control low mood. Do our special cognitive capabilities play into a uniquely human pathway into depression ? A main function of low mood is to draw attention to threats and obstacles in unfavorable environments. The consequences are a pause in behavior and a more careful analysis of the environment . In humans, this analysis is more explicit than in a tiger or a tree shrew. It's natural to expect, "If I understand why I feel bad, I will know how to fix it.
" As a scientist who studies mood, I'm naturally all for the examined life. . (1) . (2) . (5) This escalating-self-focus is far from benign.