as someone who has suffered from acute and chronic* depression, i do want ask, is disease the correct noun?
by "acute and chronic" relating to my experience, I intend this to mean long term and severe, but also "narrow basis" and severe and recurring. I know I am overloading a operator somewhere here... [ inline footnote for reading meter]
If cancer is many kinds, it is a a disease in the sense that it is systemic, and can be cured, in theory, by medicine.*
In the similar way, depression is a very wide and complex range of similar things, but the systemic nature is less definable, we only have systemic symptoms, do we not? I mean is my supposition accurate medically?
By systemic I mean depression is a malfunction of systems, interacting, that we can define as alien,unwanted, interactions of our body and brain chemistry (for surely depression can affect the entire being, and so we find things like magnesium, or sunlight or better diet help, if not resolve)
But the conditions which can cause my depression, are emotional or circumstantial even, very much more than environmental or physical health.
(I learned this after too many years had passed, I was made to be unaware, unpleasantly made to be unaware, of a infant trauma i endured amazingly well, but which sank triggers deep into my psyche)
Luckily - if by luckily you understand at enormous human cost* - I got through most of my younger years without resort to clinical medical intervention, such as by medication regimes, and I curl up in a fetal ball every time I hear even reference to another lamentable saga of medication experimentation (by the doctors, not patients) endured along the way to a viable life, so common among programmers.
My question whether "disease" is first of all the appropriate word to describe depression, must come with a sister question: if disease is not a universally sound description of depression, is it so in some cases, even edge cases, and if we have stretched the definition, is there a underlying argument for why we stretched the definition, other than those afflicted so often feel accursed and afflicted as if by terminal disease?
It seems to me, that because depression is a vital and axial point of interaction between brain, mind systems (reflexive brain body interfaces, e.g. exercise benefits almost always functioning) and body, is therefore a better taxonomy not necessary?
The best description I ever heard, of the DSM, is that with only the effort of observation and tedious reference, you could probably diagnose any child with all the pediatric diagnoses therein contained. Whether strictly true or not, and I wish I could recall to whom that quip is attributable, but a Psychiatric doctor 5 , that certainly ought to strike home with anyone old enough ever to have had the pangs of wanting a family.
I suggest that the computing community, is uniquely positioned, to develop a better and more innately intelligent, taxonomy, of psychiatric "disease" (if it must be so called) and that it might be right to "reclaim" a important but seriously, gravely, and frequently abused "discipline" from a profession almost a industry of commercial practitioners.
* years and years after i learned what "survival rate" for cancer really means, I am still aghast that such a blatant semantic spin could be applied to something s incredibly important. The very idea that a huge, industrial scale, hard science in modern medicine, would willingly supplicate to acceptance of language so distorting, and liable to distort perception, remains beyond me, a assault on the senses I first gained benefit my first and earliest exposure to science as a discipline.
*
Beyond me, the personal devastation to loved ones, to anyone who cared for me, ever, was appalling. For only myself, I elected to end up in prison, rather than risk being committed, which would have created a probably fatal misdiagnosis that freezes me, i feel nauseous just saying this.. these people play with lives... in prison, i only found about two thirds were dumped there who probably should have been in hospital for mental health problems, and did some amateur lawyering, of which I am intensely proud, and one day want to figure out a way to encourage like efforts, because it sure ain't hard, law, only getting any legal system or judge to understand the black and white ink on paper thing, is actually hard.
* I think many of us seek the rationale and intellectual uterine safety of computing, the warm appreciation of rationality and consistency that in particular low level programming can provide. My earliest observation of a sales floor, was that mental health must be inversely proportional to the immediately available intellectual structures, and that the semantic playfulness, to be polite, of my company's sales outfit, was the obvious explanation for whiskey under desks, and regular delivery of marching powders. Sometimes this drives the more creative to create enormous works, of varying success, in creating reflexive, consistent, homogeneous systems. At least I thought that efforts such as CLOS, C++ templates, were efforts at including the world, by type inheritance, and therefore insuring a hermetic and therefore emotionally safe, environment in the editor. (But then I purchased Design Patterns, when it came out, hardback, and loved it... but i knew i may have projected this thought onto it, as much as it may be a projection now, and by no means should I expect to be able to apply my own self meta cognition into the world, not before some very careful type definition, anyhow...
*5 two school friends attained giddying heights, one Royal Colldge Psychiatry and General Medical Council (one of the boards anyway), the other a worldwide veep for a major pharma, having a psycho-pharma career taking him to that position. Neither will;speak of their experiences, both quit from such great heights, i sense about the moment their family was financially secure. One works with startups now, and I wish I could give my bottom of lunch box adoring endorsement, but both are privacy intense, for indisputably valid, obvious, reasons..