The purpose of depression

Please discuss the biological purpose of depression and suicidal tendencies. Is there a reason, or is it just a complex system losing balance. Can depression be passed down through generations? What role does consciousness have on both fighting and creating depression?

Thanks, it will be interesting hearing your replies

 

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What makes you think it has a "purpose"?
What's the purpose of a cold, or cancer?
AFAIK depressive tendencies can be passed on but not depression itself.
Unless you're talking about my mother - she's enough to depress anyone.

 

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It probably has to do with humanity being packed as sardines.
Perhaps in the past, when a tribe became too crowded, some people simply left to join another one or start a new one. Nowadays, you simply can't get away.
Repressing a primal urge can never be healthy. Hold you breath for two minutes and you'll find out

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biological purpose? going by natural selection i suppose a depressed person avoids a lot of potentially dangerous situations by staying home all day. chicks like fixing guys, so depression isn't always counter productive sexually.

i think its more the system losing balance. too much stress leads to excess amount of certain chemicals in the body, etc. etc. etc.

i've heard depression is hereditary, but its such a loosely defined 'disease', and assuming the apple never falls far from the tree, is it a case of 'same situation, same symptoms'?

 

When you're suffering from depression you don't fix anything you just sit there watching things fall apart the way your life is doing.
Depression IS counter-productive sexually in that, when down, even sex is beyond your capabilities.

 

Hmmm ...... do you mean reactive depression ( caused by stress or traumatic events ) or do you mean ,what in old days , was called endogenous depression - depression coming from within , without any known stressfactors ??

"Consciousness" could have a role in reactive depression - think creative and solve your problems , so the stress goes away - that will relieve the depression - and indeed the best way to treat reactive depression is cognitive therapy - that gives you the tools to solve the problem ( though sometimes medication is needed too ) ...

Depression not caused by stress , normally needs medication or even ECT - it is known to be partly genetically inherited - an identical twin has a risk from 33 to 90 % to get a depression in life , if the other twin had a depression ..... studies are focusing on disturbances in neurotransmitters in the brain - especially serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine .

Lately studies have raised the question , whether dysfunction of the immunosystem could cause suicidal tendencies - since there has been found elevated levels of interleukin-6 in cerebrospinalfluid .... and raised levels of interleukin-2-receptors in plasma in suicidal persons .........

http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/bps/article/PIIS0006322309001280/abstract

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119975391/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

 

i think you're talking about extreme cases, but i do use a very flexible definition.

 

Okay, I was referring to clinical depression.
AFAIK my case (for example) isn't regarded as particularly extreme by a long shot. :shrug:

 

While depression can be an issue on its own, there are other conditions and disorders that can cause depression if not treated properly.

ADHD is one of those disorders. If not treated properly it can cause both anxiety and depression. I have ADHD and have been through both the depression and anxiety portions. It's not fun.

 

Clinical depression is a psychiatric illness, it doesn't have a purpose. As for being a bit blue, do any emotions really give us an evolutionary advantage?

Iceland has one of the highest rates of depression in the world. The current theory is that lack of sunshine and low temperatures trigger those prone to the illness.
Your suggestion sounds plausible enough, but Iceland is very sparsely populated compared to countries like the UK.

 

Well, I wasn't suggesting there is a single cause

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Mmmh.....
So sadness is really sardine-ness.

 

I think so, in part at least.

 

i dont know about that.

 

When depression and anxiety is caused by doing something bad or treating other people badly then I guess the way out is to be nicer to others and doing good things instead. As such depression is just a lost balance, and you need to get the ingredients that will counteract that loss.

Then we have other depressions which may be caused by chemical imbalances or perhaps even brain damage (I don't know about the latter) those might be counteracted by medicine or perhaps you need to behave in another way as to counteract it? I don't really know, but that's my two cents.

 

this is my sort-of-scientific-yet-non-proven theory.

evolutionary speaking, depression is one of the many physiological responses evolved to help the body make better choices in life (so you can better survive in the surrounding enviroment). when an event is damanging to you somehow, the body gives you a dose of depression pills so you'll learn to avoid the same thing from happening to you in the future.

it's like you eat because you feel full and happy after eating a meal. if you don't eat, you'll feel hungry, tired, cranky etc. so all these feelings have a purpose; they encourage you eat so you'll survive. another example is our orgasms; our species would not have been successful like we are today if our orgasms had been painful instead of ecstatic

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these feelings, drepressing ones included, are designed to help us survive and reproduce.

however, if the depression is caused by a genetic condition or a disease then in this case it doesn't really have a "purpose."

 

interesting:scratchin:

 

I think depression is a signal of need. i.e. its a signal that the individual gives off when there is a mismatch between his individual needs and the demands of the social matrix that make up his environment. Which is why its not only negative events that can trigger it, but also positive events. Its a signal that the individual feels powerless

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Hello, I study psychology at University.

I don't know if all depression is the same, but one cause in not making enough neurons in the limbic system - primarily low neurogenesis in the the subgranular zone (SGZ) which is a part of the dentate gyrus of hippocampus. SSRI'a (anti-depressants such as prozac) increase the number of neurons generated - so does Buddhist meditation, exercise, even coffee.

I prefer to think about these things biologically rather than self-help arm chair psychology. I think that psychology of depression will eventually be based on mRNA, DNA and protenome, actually, I'm sure it will.

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Ari

 

While cancer and a cold both have obvious causes, depression, as with most mental illnesses, are more nebulous. Depression is caused by what? What causes its malfunctioning?

A cold is an infection- it shouldn't be there in the first place, and it's binary. Either you have viral particles making you sick, or you don't.

Cancer may be more like depression, in that your own system has turned against you. However, a cancerous cell is very different from a non-cancerous cell. There's no continuum of kind of cancerous to really cancerous. Either your cells are behaving in orderly, regimented ways, responding to the proper cell signals, or they're not.

But being depressed is just being really, really sad. Temporary depression clearly serves a purpose- if you lose a child, and it doesn't make you sad, then on child number two, what's the big deal about losing it? It's a social mechanism similar to the one that keeps our hands out of fires.