Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)
nautil.us
nautil.us
Most people who suffer from depression because of environmental factors have no real substantial changes they can make to their life that would resolve the root issue of their depression.
I could "fix" my depression once I had an independent high paying job that let me live anywhere and choose to live in the way I need to live in order to be happy. My episodes are far between now and, again, caused by things I don't have enough control over.
What I'm saying is that we paper over the contradictions of the illusion of self determination peddled to us in rich Western societies by making depression seem like a personal, idiopathic problem.
> What I'm saying is that we paper over the contradictions of the illusion of self determination peddled to us in rich Western societies by making depression seem like a personal, idiopathic problem.
But when a chapter of my life comes to an end, it's like a game of musical chairs. And I'm just a little bit slow to find a seat. This slowness or non-resourcefulness in securing my next seat doesn't come anywhere near the symptoms of major depression. Suppose there's a layoff at work. I'm just a bit slower than others to catch on that I need to find another job. Just a bit less likely to talk to people and chase down opportunities. So I stay unemployed longer, along with the other compounded problems that can cause. After a long time not having my needs met, I get depressed, and eventually I'll be diagnosed with major depression and probably hospitalized.
This is perhaps subtle, but I don't believe I'm especially prone to depression per se. When I'm in a stable life situation, I'm very positive, optimistic, and industrious. I seem to have it all together, and I do. What I'm prone to is being a little bit passive, and fairly introverted. That's not depression, and it doesn't cause any big problems if I'm only maintaining a full life.
But jobs and romantic relationships can end abruptly. And with me it's always one or the other, and often both, that puts me in a situation where I have to act, be assertive, and secure that next seat. And sometimes I have adequate initiative to do that, and it's fine. If I don't though, one of these two things (job or romantic relationship ending suddenly) turns out to be the beginning of a slide. It's usually at least a year after the event that I start having symptoms, and by that time, 4 times out of 5 I'll wind up hospitalized.
Obviously this is just one person's life, one person's experience with depression, and their own interpretation of the mechanisms.
My girlfriend works in a psychiartry for people with depression and she told me that it has nothing todo with success.
people who suffer from depression because of environmental factors
Folks who have brain wonkiness can't fix it by fixing other life problems. But people who are depressed because their life sucks absolutely can see their mood improve by fixing other problems.
This is not at all what the field of psychology has identified as the "general sources"
I will share that it is both more complex than many believe - and also less mysterious. "it's chemical" gets overplayed, while our relationship with our emotions is often left unexamined. There's a great deal of interconnectedness and sometimes cause & effect become confused or are tightly coupled. In the end, we're still learning, and everyone is different.
(edited)
Presumably, it's always a biochemical issue, though sometimes the biochemical state may be triggered by events in the social context.
Rank Theory tethers itself to depressive experiences in situations where social pecking order is the trigger. Basically, to help aide success and survival in a group setting.
Psychic pain hypothesis, for example, comes to a similar conclusion about the evolutionary value of depression, but does so without considering social pecking order.
We know depression can also be triggered just from screwed up biology. So "lack of success" really may not be the issue in a lot of cases.
It seems that depression forces people to search for problems that aren't there
If you don't mind, what sort of patients does she work with?
Hm, even though I don't work in a psychatry, I would claim otherwise. But I think it depends on the definition of success.
So yes, there are lots of people having depression who are successful by ordinary standards, meaning good career and money. But maybe they focused too much on the money/prestige part and instead should have focused more on doing what they really wanted. But they didn't and therefore failed in life and now blame their brain chemistry for it, instead of their own choices. Much easier, sure.
The job didn't cure my depression but the money let me do the things I need to do to be happy. I stayed with my parents for a bit when I got my first programming job. Moving out was one major positive thing for me.
Money doesn't make you happy, but you only really have power over your life when you have money. That's the blunt truth. Most of us, even us relatively well off programmers are subordinated to the system that gives us money. My mental health would be in even better shape if I didn't have to consign 40 hours of my life per week to work.
If one needed that time to get their life in order to cure their depression, it would be impossible unless they were rich, right? The way we talk about depression often ignores this crucial point.
Link: https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/studie-psykisk-ohalsa-blir...
(only in Swedish, sorry!)
Here is the complete report (in Swedish): http://ltblekinge.se/globalassets/forskning-och-utveckling/b...
They mention a smiliar study from the US, but here money was only one out of multiple factors:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229888823_Supported...
On the other hand, much work isn't like that. See for example Disciplines Minds: http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
Or Bob Black: https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.or... "Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. ..."
Or Mickey Z: "The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet"
Yet, some jobs are better than others. Some families are healthier than others. Once can wonder what the difference is? For creating better organizations, last year I put together a reading list here: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations...
I also explore some related issues in terms of rethinking Princeton University (or any similar place) to be more health-promoting in this 2008 book-length essay I wrote: "Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease" http://pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
Perhaps E.F. Schumacher put it best in "Buddhist Economics": http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/buddhist-economics "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
I agree otherwise though that in our society having money gives you more flexibility in the work you can choose --- as well as how you can address other needs in your life of the lives of those you care about when you are not working. Sometimes there is a tradeoff between money earned and job happiness -- but not always.
There are also other ways to meet needs besides having a job in the exchange economy (or maybe someday a basic income). There is frugality to reduce wants and needs. There is subsistence production to make things yourself and have the joy of crafting or living off the land (how most humans have lived for most of the time). There is the gift economy of getting things for free (like information on the internet) and giving back to the community somehow (again, something humans have been going as part of tribes for a long time). There is the planned economy we participate in as citizens and where government allocates money hopefully to specific worthwhile social purposes (though the money is obtained from the citizenry under duress via taxes). Sadly, some people also turn to theft for whatever reasons. So, there are a variety of options, some better, some worse, depending on an individual's situation and what is feasible in a specific society.
I just need X and then I won't be depressed!
That's a NORMAL psychological process (not having something important, feeling negative about it). If obtaining X (career, significant relationship, etc.) does cure your "depression" then you didn't have clinical depression to begin with. You're a human being who was unhappy that their situation in life was crappy.
The litmus test for depression is when, even after obtaining X, your baseline resets to a depressed state as you were before you had X. So while obtaining X might bring some relief, you always return to a baseline happiness that is significantly lower than the average person.
Depends. There's a decent amount of evidence that exercise can help reduce episodes of depression, even clinical depression. If obtaining X is obtaining a healthier body, then there's a decent chance you can help to lift yourself out of a funk by getting it. However, there's comfort in believing that something can't be helped, so I won't blame you if you don't believe me.
By no means am I saying that a clinically depressed individual "cant be helped". There's nothing comforting about that thought at all. Quite the contrary, those types of people DO exist and have found relief visa vi standard modes of care (CBT, and medication).
If a clinically depressed person tries both medication and exercise, and finds exercise helps them more, does that bother you? Are you suggesting that they can't have been clinically depressed?
If you're "depressed" but you don't workout, adding a solid workout plan to your life can be a bigger positive effect in your mood than therapy or medication.
But... if you're managing your life well, including exercising, and still feel depressed then that's what I am qualifying as "clinically depressed".
Of course we all get "depressed" when we eat like shit, don't have meaningful relationships, don't have a meaningful career, and never workout. That's to be expected.
This is the point I still can't understand. So in other words you're only clinically depressed if the only thing that helps you is external help (medication, CBT, etc...)? Why do you use that definition? It doesn't seem to be a definition shared by the psychiatry community or the psychology community.
However, I know a couple people who do not fall into that bucket. Both of these people suffer bouts of totally debilitating depression. They are both respected within their communities, smart, successful, and have full lives. Both of them get a lot of exercise, both are extremely fit and have been their whole lives.
In my opinion, the way to look at this kind of depression is as a chemical imbalance. Theorizing that there's some missing piece in their lives seems ridiculous to me. And yes, antidepressants work.
Having lived my entire life dealing with depression, I believe you are wrong. Any "chemical imbalance" is a symptom, the physical expression of a mind suffering.
For god sakes, if you smoke a pack a day, don't have a job, and haven't left the house for 2 weeks... I'd sure bet you qualify as being "depressed" in the literal sense. I'm more interested in the individual who fixes those things, and yet, still wants to die.
The kind of depression you're talking about (which you incorrectly term as 'clinical depression') is exactly how you describe it. There is no cause X, in the world which would fix it.
However, a lot of people feel depressed and their cause is different, than the cause for the first kind of depression.
The article GP linked, is talking about a theory that it's caused by body shutting down to prevent you from overinvesting in failed strategy is quite true for people feeling second kind of depression, and this may be the evolutionary reason for depression.
For the first kind of depression, I believe it's a disease caused by the depression (which has evolutionary reasons) working erratically.
It could be argued that you are voluntarily living with your parents because renting doesn't make financial sense.
It's a trade-off.
If you felt strongly enough about it you might potentially say something like "despite the financial trade-off being in favour of living with my parents, I find doing so makes me feel controlled and depressed, so I choose to [rent a room in a share-house / whatever other option might be available."
I know, for me, my cyclic depression and suicidal ideation didn't lift until I started taking 1000+mg of magnesium as magnesium amino acid chelate and 8,000IU of vitamin D per day, despite having a relatively high-paying job and owning a (mortgaged) house.
> but from my point of view I've barely grown up as an adult because the environment at home has never changed.
With all the best of intentions and kindness: as an adult, it's probably up to you* to change that.
No, it does not, I'd positively go crazy if I were to stay with my parents, even though I love them and they've been giving me plenty of freedom and independence.
I just need _my_ space. Heck, I didn't even let my grandma cook dinner when my grandparents flew from out of state.
Get out of there, even if it means living with other roommates. You know it will make you feel better. No shame in complaining about free rent when that makes you unhappy. All your points are valid.
Righteous anger properly channeled can be a force for good. But if your current crappy situation is the least worst answer you can come up with, depression is the lesser evil. You shouldn't rock the boat if there is zero upside and a lot of downside to doing so.
What’s more, once the researchers took the effect of physical strength out of the equation, men and women were equally likely to be depressed.
Humans, and men especially, are pre-disposed to solve social problems with violence. In cultures where violence is restrained or completely removed as a solution, it's not surprising that more men are depressed.
There's a Terry Pratchett quote which I like on this subject:
> Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.
These also relate to the things that tend to make teenagers/young adults depressed.
[1]: Nothing we know about biology in general and evolution in particular entails that assumption (except in specific circumstances where the mechanism is understood, but if the mechanism is understood the interpretation is unnecessary), hence it's axiomatic.
> Nothing we know about biology in general and evolution in particular entails that assumption
That's a bigger statement than you could probably validate So it doesn't falsify this could-be story.
Evolution is about surviving the winnowing. Strategies that create high survival rates tend to propagate. Proposing a "purpose" for the strategy is just a means to try to understand the mechanism that causes them to foster higher survival rates and thereby propogate.
I agree that most psychosocial stuff is on not very solid ground. To put it nicely, it is more art than science.
Where I basically disagree is that this makes it not worthwhile to pursue and inherently inferior to religion.
That's a brave position. I think it's not exactly Freudian dream theory. Though the 'just-so stories' characterisation can be fair... Saying that, behavioural biology is without question a scientific endeavour, with obvious connections to both evolution and human psychology - is that well-grounded evo psych or is evo psych poorly-grounded behavioural biology?
"A crisis is too good a thing to waste. Not only should you have as many as you have time for, you should succumb to each as quickly and completely as possible, and then bounce back as quickly as you can so you can have another one. Resistance is not just futile, it is counter-productive.
This aesthetically appropriate and functionally necessary response to a crisis is a crash. If you don’t crash, it wasn’t a crisis. A healthy, crisis-ridden life is one that evolves rapidly, one crash at a time. So it stands to reason that navigating such a healthy life well involves crashing early and crashing often (CECO; life is a FEFO in CECO out, or FICO system)."
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/17/we-are-all-architects-...
Of course we are in a novel high stress environment so I think it can be triggered erroneously or we just need to now live through really shitty situations at work, etc.
I wonder if antidepressants in some cases encourage an individual to stick out/survive a situation they should really be escaping from?
Thing is, in primitive, savannah environment all problems were simple enough that they could be solved by just few hours/days of thinking and planning. Nowadays we live in civilized society which poses much bigger challenges, which cannot be easily fixed. That's why depression can extend to weeks/months, and after that time it becomes chronic condition, even when the actual problems that caused it has already gone away.
But I would also argue, I that even in primitiv societies, things could get very complex - because their daily life involved also lots of deamons, spirits, ect. you had a bad dream, but that might mean that an enemy sorcerer tried to kill you and now you needed to figure out who and what to do against it ...
I wonder if this is something new or that only was misreported or not documented.
Maybe living on modern society in huge metropolitan areas, where no local sense of community, thus lacking cooperative behaviour incentive indeed has these effects as human society never would have scaled evolutionary to this level before.
Or maybe it was just underrepresented chronologically and just now we have the luxury of mostly not starving if we don't work to get the food, allied with the huge complexity layer of things to beware about these days.
So fundamentally my question is if we just would not report or pay attention or attribute to sobrenatural stuff, like demon possession and indeed there was already depression and other 'modern' mental issues; or if this always existed and just now we have the luxury to look at it.
Now, asking if it is a trait that contributed to fitness directly in the environment in which it arose (rather than a side effect of the underlying mechanism of some such trait or combination of traits that is not, in itself, a contributor to fitness in the environment in which it arose) may be a useful and legitimate question to ask.
OTOH, this article doesn't really seem to have much to offer but speculation that segues into a really unrelated (and poorly considered) argument about treating depression that is about equivalent, borrowing the article’s own broken leg analogy, to arguing that because broken legs ultimately may be caused by, e.g., uneven stairs, that doctors are obligated to fix the stairs before treating the broken leg.
To put it simply purpose of depression can be completely different than the effects we experience it’s just that it doesn’t have any major disadvantages as far human reproduction goes so we didn’t had the chance to fuck it out of our gene pool.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolu...
Dr. Stephen Ilardi from the University of Kansas takes the opposite position. In his book, The Depression Cure, he says that depression is a disease of modernity. "[O]ur bodies were never designed for the sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, frenzied pace of twenty-first century life."
Hair is an evolutionary advantage, not a big one but bald women don't mate as successfully as women with nice hair do, on average
A trait being seen as attractive in a mate is another way that trait evolves. Hair isn't evolutionary advantageous because it attracts mates, it attracts mates because it is evolutionary advantageous. Sexual selection can get weird and select for things that are fairly far removed from what we might think as utility.
Part of hair's purpose is just as an indicator of health. If you're very unhealthy your hair will fall out or look particularly bad, if it's long and nice looking that means you've probably been healthy for a long time too. That's probably a good indicator at how good you are at taking care of yourself and likewise how good you will be at taking care of your offspring and how good they will be at taking care of themselves.
Sometimes sexual selection is just about how much energy you can spend on doing something to look attractive with no other purpose. Lots of birds exhibit this.
Of course this is not true but there just aren't words in English for the subtle and specific concepts involved. Correctly communicating the concepts with our clumsy language requires stumbling around and turning concise ideas into difficult to understand monsters.
When you are talking about evolutionary purpose, you're actually talking about the set of cause and effect pressures that lead to the effect.
The human tailbone is less purposeful than the hair because we can reason fairly easily that the loss of hair would decrease fitness in some very believable situations. The loss of a tailbone we can't seem to think of any fitness changes.
We have both hair and a tailbone. There _is_ evolutionary pressure to keep hair, although not extreme pressure as there's quite a bit of variability. There is not much evolutionary pressure to have or get rid of a tailbone. In order for there to be a change there has to be a path of mutations that survives and grows in a population. There probably A) isn't an easy path of mutations to get rid of the tailbone and B) isn't a meaningful cost to grow and maintain one. Those two things put together make lack of purpose. It's there, but doesn't really make a difference and isn't easily changed.
All this sounds new age, but it works.
I feel what we call "depression" is actually a spectrum of symptoms -- although those symptoms might have certain shared common traits (such as strong inertia and not wanting to do anything), they actually could be quite different in other aspects. For instance, when you are not doing anything, it could be that you are ruminating; or it could also be that your body and brain are simply numb, and not thinking about anything.
The article says,
In this view, the disordered and extreme thinking that
accompanies depression, which can leave you feeling
worthless and make you catastrophize your circumstances,
is needed to punch through everyday positive illusions and
focus you on your problems. In a study of 61 depressed
subjects, 4 out of 5 reported at least one upside to their
rumination, including self-insight, problem solving, and
the prevention of future mistakes.
My point is that, as according to what has been written in the article,
"...the disordered and extreme thinking that accompanies
depression..." "In a study of 61 depressed subjects, 4 out of 5
reported at least one upside to their rumination,
including self- insight, problem solving, and the
prevention of future mistakes..."
So, basically saying that depression in itself might have some evolutionary purpose seems a bit far fetched.
The brain is an extreamly complex "organ" with many many different potential points of failure. Attempts to find a reason for abnormal behaviors by such type of guessing (finding an evolutionary reason) looks to me like our ancestors did when attributing to gods will unexpected natural events.
It's not impossible that depressive behavior is a natural brain protective measure (thinking of burnout here), but this reasonning really looks like guessing and as truth seeker, we shouldn't accept the risk to be wrong on this.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030698771...
"A tumor is an organ that has the function of killing the individual"
Any creature can live with less than 10% of our level of thinking. I mean humans brains is more of a threat to nature than advantage!