The evolutionary origin of depression: Mild and bitter (The Economist)
ah, one last thing - to analogize from the range-of-depression thing at the end of my last (somewhat incoherent, it’s late and i’m groggy) post - some diabetics respond to dietary changes, whereas others will need insulin shots no matter how strictly they watch what their eat, right? For a lot of chronic pain, some people have great success managing or eliminating their symptoms through “lifestyle changes” (ugh hate that phrase but can’t think of anything better), and yeah, some of those people then turn around and tell others that ANYONE can cure their whatever by eating a lot of gingko biloba or something, which is falling into a trap I try to avoid talking about depression, i.e. thinking that because you were fortunate enough that something worked for you, it will work for everyone with your illness (please do not get me started on the whole positive-attitude-fights-cancer approach). If an illness can be managed/treated without medication, that’s great for you, NOT because there is anything wrong with needing to take medication but because medication costs $$$ and sometimes has side effects, but not all versions of the same illness will respond to non-medication treatments, and that is true of depression as well as of other things.Shifting your priorities to be more in line w/ your worldview is not a bad thing. But it’s not going to cure depression, because, see, as we’ve been fighting for so long to get people to understand, depression is an ILLNESS. And just as asthma, diabetes, arthritis, and a million other things are chronic illnesses which require treatment - and different treatments work for different peopel - so is depression.
