Two Root Causes Of My Recent Depression
feld.com
feld.com
[edited] Exhaustion from stressful life events can result is extreme, suicidal depression that definitely qualifies as "mental illness" - not just a few "negative feelings".
There is really no reason to be so hostile. Perhaps to show respect to the issue under discussion (depression) we could all resolve to be a little kinder to those we speak with.
Contrasting normal everyday sadness versus clinical depression, requiring medication, is accurate.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml
I don't see anything there that indicates that sadness must be "without cause" to constitute depression.
Contrasting normal everyday sadness versus clinical depression, requiring medication, is accurate.
True. But we should be careful when making that distinction, whether for ourselves or others, as the line isn't necessarily cut and dried. I think just dismissing someone's report of being "depressed" as "that's just normal sadness" is a very dangerous mindset. If someone's sad enough to choose the label "depressed" for themselves, that alone probably suggests that it's a matter to be taken seriously.
In this case, he mentions a debilitating 50 mile run, a bike accident, and an operation, which very well could be the main causes rather than any job or emotional stress.
That's absolutely true, but I think it's dangerous to dismiss someone's description of being depressed. At the end of the day, probably nobody (or a small handful of people) on HN are actually qualified to offer a proper diagnosis. So the rest of us can speculate all we want, but for someone who is depressed, to be perceived as making light of their situation, or dismissing it, might actually lead them to an even worse place.
Of course, I have no idea if Brad Feld reads HN or not, so maybe it's a moot point in this specific case. But still, I would encourage trying to have a great deal of empathy for people who refer to themselves as "depressed".
The way I see it is this. Life as a biological organism is a two-way interaction between your biological systems, and the putative 'outside world'. And most of what you experience as your life occurs within your brain. There is lots of feedback between your brain and the outside world, notably between your brain and the brains of others. And there is lots of feedback within your own brain, with itself. This is all true for every person, whether or not you happen to have had a run-in with the first-world, western mental health system, and received a 'diagnosis' based on someone's observation of a small part of your process that is deemed dysfunctional.
What we call depression is extremely common, but we don't like it and we wish we didn't have to experience it, so we call it an illness. But it is a very common reaction to certain types of adversity: abuse, failures, disappointments, dissolution of important relationships. Such patterns are well-known even to clinicians. The view of depression as just a 'disease' that afflicts the brain for no reason... I can't imagine where this originated. I've experienced deep depression, numerous times, and I've known people who did as well. I could tell you all the reasons. Maybe they make happy people uncomfortable. I know that when I've been happy, it has been tempting to believe that I earned it, chose it, made it for myself - something self-empowering.
The reasons for depression usually boil down to prolonged alienation and frustration. Being in a place in life that is maladaptive, and not being able to find a way out in a short amount of time. Not being able to find a job, not being able to make friends or find love, or being in a relationship that is very unhappy and not being able to get out. Being in some life situation that can't be willed out of, like having a felony record, or an incurable disease. Not having completed enough education. Having low self-esteem or perceiving oneself to be a failure, for subjective but still real reasons like being ugly, overweight, or socially awkward.
I feel like one of the causes of the persistent misunderstanding of this condition is that most people seem to want to believe happy people are in control of their happiness (whether that means being in control of their external conditions, or control of their attitude), and also want to excuse depressed people from having to be in control of their depression. This is partly sensible, and perhaps rightly motivated, because happiness is characterized by feeling in sufficient control of ones state of being, and depression is a state of prolonged lack of control. But this does not in any way suggest that the depression was random. Look behind that defeated, disconnected state of mind, turn back the clock, and you will find events that led the person into that horrible state.
You mean "rationalize." Humans are really good at finding causal relationships between things, even when they aren't there. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't feel a certain way, but diagnosable depressing is often more complex than "I over-exerted myself".
Personally, I found the article vacuous because it presumes that you can figure out what's going on in your head. It's pretty well established at this point that we cannot reliably do this.
Indeed, but it surely means that uninformed self-assessments are nearly worthless, wrong, and even a little pretentious. I am of the opinion from my read of the current literature that it's all but impossible for you to accurately self-assess this.
I'd love for an expert in neurology to correct me on this because it'd be more optimistic to believe otherwise.
Here's a great lecture that discusses the differences (I'm pretty sure it was this one... if not, it's still a great lecture): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc
I now realise that [1] all the stressors add up, [2] it's very important to enjoy what you're working on and [3] you need to craft your lifestyle to be fulfilling.
Anyway, I made serious changes to my lifestyle (including working full-time on my startup), and things have worked out beautifully.
Its very healthy that a high up guy like this is open and talking about mental health issues. It leads us all to talking about them. In fact I realize I need a break now too. Thank you Brad, for checking yourself before wrecking yourself, and making me think about it too.
tl;dr for Brad's post: Depression was caused by physical exhaustion/injuries and lack of work stimulation.
Not willing to say no to existing plans when they are no longer viable, and not keeping an eye on the internal balances of the work itself, can lead to a bad situation. Be mindful in your own life.
I had an intense insight a few weeks ago when a friend told me that as one gets older, the line between learning and teaching blurs. This is consistent with how I think about mentoring, where the greatest mentor – mentee relationship is a peer relationship, where both the mentor and mentee learn from and teach each other. With this insight, I realized I needed to stop separating learning from teaching in my motivational construct – that they were inextricably linked.
I think most cases of depression have obvious causes if you care to look.
You fail, then you die.
One thing that highlights this sort of reasoning really well is genetic diseases. In some situations (cystic fibrosis, syckle cell anemia, etc) the mutated gene gives benefits as long as you are lucky enough to not get two copies of it, in which case you get a fatal disease instead.
His brief was that depression is evolutionary, and has an evolutionary function. In his view, depression is the result of 'loosing'. His example was a certain species of insect, I forget which now, which challenges another male to a display/fight. The looser not only turns bright orange in response to the stress hormone cascade released after loosing, but also stops eating and more than 50% die from starvation before recovering.
How is this an adaptation? Well, the stress response reinforces hierarchy, and maintains group cohesion by providing a mechanism for 'shunning', both by other group members and by the individual theirselves.
He was a big fan of Robert Trivers, an evolutionary psychiatrist who has written much on 'the evolution of reciprocal altruism'.
Now the fact that depression may have a strong evolutionary cause is of course maladaptive in our modern world where we would like all people to enjoy happiness and be productive members of society.
Of course, this 'adaptation' causes tremendous prolonged suffering as it plays out, in practice.