Two scientists suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but a mental adaptation that brings certain cognitive advantages.
Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare � why isn�t depression?
If you're not into reading long fascinating articles, the idea proposed is that while in a state of depression people are more able to analyze complex problems, that depression is an evolutionary adaptation.
Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain�s ability to process information.
Granted it is a "new" idea, that needs plenty more research. Also, I don't think anyone would claim that depression isn't dangerous. However, it "totally justifies" any depressive benders I've been on.
I can already see the drug commercials:
"Feeling like you can't solve complex problems because you're too happy? We can help bring you down to a place where you can!"
Also, if they're right drinking at work might make a come back?
...yeah, I'd say being able to solve complex problems isn't a fair enough trade-off for being completely unmotivated to do anything, feeling inadequate to do your job, etc.
Otoki said:
...yeah, I'd say being able to solve complex problems isn't a fair enough trade-off for being completely unmotivated to do anything, feeling inadequate to do your job, etc.
Plus, I don't think it's really serving its purpose anymore. If you're a cave man, you get depressed that you have no food, so you sit in your cave and think about how to better kill a mammoth. I don't think your average modern human is doing much more than feeling sorry for themselves. I don't think I've ever talked to someone I know while they were depressed and found them thinking really hard on how to better their situation. Mostly they use their expanded brain power to better feel sorry for themselves.
I wonder how chronic depression fits into this.
I'll have to try to remember to try and depress myself the next time I am having trouble thinking something through.
Part of the article that I found interesting was this:
There is another suggestive line of evidence. Various studies have found that people in depressed mood states are better at solving social dilemmas. Yet these would seem to have been precisely the kind of problems difficult enough to require analysis and important enough to drive the evolution of such a costly emotion. Consider a woman with young children who discovers her husband is having an affair. Is the wife’s best strategy to ignore it, or force him to choose between her and the other woman, and risk abandonment? Laboratory experiments indicate that depressed people are better at solving social dilemmas by better analysis of the costs and benefits of the different options that they might take.
I don't think that they are saying that chronic depression or severe depression are helpful, but rather that the "mood state" depression is helpful in situations where a person is trying to resolve or solve a problem.
I find MrStiches comment interesting in so much as many people do seem to be using their expanded brain power to feel sorry for themselves, but perhaps they don't know of, or do not have exposure to a potential solution to the problem that triggered the depression. Many of the situations that result in depression are difficult to solve. So rather than be able to "ruminate" until they come out of that state, they get stuck there?
Of course it is possible that they aren't in the "mood state" depression and are just feeling sad, which as far as I can tell is significantly different.
joker_
Minneapolis, MN
October 2005
SEP 02, 2009 03:48 PM