New Study Challenges a Genetic Link to Stress, Depression | Hacker News Reader

New Study Challenges a Genetic Link to Stress, Depression

psychcentral.com

The lack of a link to depression has been known since 2009

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/18410...

What remains interesting is a plausible effect on placebo

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19052197 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26272535

Completely anecdotal, but many of my friends that are of Asian descent have a tough time putting a finger on or grasping what depression is. It almost seems like it's not something that they have been wired to be able to feel or experience.

I was wondering if there was any research to back up that tendency....

Isn't this true for pretty much anyone that hasn't actually experienced it?

It's not like you can describe it exactly, I've seen a lot of "the most accurate description of depression"s that really hit home, but there's no way to make someone understand what it's actually like.

An interesting parable... I am well acquainted with many people who work with plant medicines like Ayahuasca in the indigenous Amazon.

In one such instance, a fellow was under the tutelage of two renowned Maestros (master shamans). He, after learning how to converse with them, asked them how they cure ailments like depression and anxiety.

The Maestro's had no idea what depression and anxiety were. They were only accustomed to healing physical ailments; they had to work with the Westerners to develop a modality in which they could spiritually heal anxiety and depression.

I reflect on this story often, as it is a reminder that to those whose only concern is their next meal or the snakes in the grass, they need not fret the ghosts of the future or the past.

>I reflect on this story often, as it is a reminder that to those whose only concern is their next meal or the snakes in the grass, they need not fret the ghosts of the future or the past.

I remember when I quit my job way back. Stayed alone in my apartment for 6 months without seeing anyone and was drowning in debt learning a whole host of tech that was way out of my depth at the time (in order to find a better job, which I did). My now GF asks me how I 'got through it' and I have a tough time explaining that when reality hits you don't really have time to be depressed or feel anything. Just 'do'. Like some survival switch turns on.

It's a good story. My parents immigrated from a communist country after many years and they don't understand 'mental illness' or anything related. Every question is just met with 'there was no time for it'.

The discipline of Psychology is regional. It's only a bit over 100 years old and (basically, work with me here) originated in Austria.

As I read just the other day from, I think, Linda Tirado, many cultures have no concept of mental illness. Either you're normal or you're retarded, and normal people are expected to power through whatever problems on their own. If you can't, then you must be developmentally disabled.

Warning: personal, not medical opinion: I've always subscribed to the theory that depression is an indicator that you need to make changes in your life.

I've been more-or-less depressed for probably 10 years. If I have nothing else that I have to do I'm very likely to spend the day in bed. I hate weekends because there's no work/office routine to distract me. I know (or think I know) what the cause is, and I could pull up stakes and make major changes and get away from it, but I've chosen not to for reasons that are complicated. If I'm right, it will resolve itself in about another four years.

> I've always subscribed to the theory that depression is an indicator that you need to make changes in your life.

Depression is an umbrella term that covers several different forms of the illness.

But most people treating depression talk about the "bio psycho social" model - that people may needs meds for the biological stuff; a talking therapy for the psychological stuff; and lifestyle changes and interventions for all the rest.

My point is that there are a lot of people who don't have any concept of depression as a chronic condition. In your example, you should simply make those changes, and if you can't do that then try harder.

That's an interesting thought that I think likely has some validity. It certainly doesn't keep east Asians from committing an awful lot of suicide, though.

You might find this doc series interesting:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/rethinking-depression-part-1-1...

There is some discussion in it about the very historical nature of the concept of depression and how it was not "a thing" even 50-100 years ago.

Without saying depression doesn't exist it does call into question the rather schematic and reductionist description of it that we work with today.

Have you thought about explaining depression in terms of a state of being that's in the same realm of those that cause so many east Asians to commit suicide?

They don't have a word for it, that doesn't mean they don't feel it. Every culture has words of some concepts and not for others. An American has a hard time grasping the Asian concept of "face".

I guess it's possible that Asian cultures are less likely to treat depression as an illness in the same way, but, let me tell you… I am of Asian descent and depression is very familiar to me, not just in me but in Asians around me. Asian-descended people are certainly capable of feeling and experiencing depression.

Original articla: http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201744...

Interesting, I wonder if studies that find a negative, like this one, are more likely to stand the test of time than ones like this study rebutted.

The press release is misleading. Indeed, press releases about scientific studies are almost always misleading, which is why they are not the preferred source for stories about new scientific findings.

I participate most weeks during the United States school year in a "journal club" about human behavior genetics. The meetings include researchers who research genetic influences on depression and other mental disorders. It has been known for a LONG time that depression runs in families in a way that demonstrates genetic influence on depression. (In other words, adoption studies and twin studies, and especially studies on the rare monozygotic twins who are brought in separate households, make clear that genetic similarity of human individuals is linked to their similarity in risk for depression.) It has also been known for a LONG time that environmental influences, including the vague set of influences called "stress," matter for development of depression, so sometimes monozygotic ("identical") twins are discordant for depression, because they have different life experiences.

What the press release is about, and what scientists have been trying to figure out during my adult life, is what the nature of genetic influences on depression might be. It has also been known for the better of a decade, and suspected much earlier by the more astute researchers on human behavior genetics, that MANY genes influence any one human behavior trait of interest. Depression is SURELY, as we can now say by the results of massive genome-wide association studies (GWASs), influenced by hundreds of genes, each of which has only a small effect on risk. So the press release reports that an early finding that was expected to show that one gene variant had a lot to do with developing depressing has rather shown that that gene variant, as is true of all other gene variants, sometimes has no detectable effect on a patient's having depression or not.

The human mood regulation system is just that, a SYSTEM, so perturbations of many different aspects of the system can cause clinical signs that are identified as "depression." What helps depression, in general, is a both-and approach of prescribed medicine under the supervision of a physician and talk therapy provided by a psychotherapist. Most patients these days with diagnosed depressed do MUCH better than patients did a generation ago. Some patients are helped a lot by one or another of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and some are not helped by those medicines at all. And that's all because depression is a clinical condition with a diverse set of underlying biochemical causes, as we know for sure from GWAS studies.

Further study of genetic relationships to depression should help develop new drugs that help some patients who are not helped by current drugs or that help patients who are already helped by existing drugs but with fewer side effects. But we are NOWHERE near being able to use genetic test results to decide which drug to use first: patients have to talk to their doctors about how they are feeling as they undergo treatment. Your best bet for finding good treatment if you feel depressed is to find out what has helped a NEAR relative who has also suffered depression.

Can I get a shaman in here for some verification?

rim-shot

Hey, you think curanderos didn't keep good records?

Me, I prefer shrooms to SSRIs.

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Meta joke to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102532

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