Re:Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases
by venomsnake on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @02:47AM
(#11379899)
My favorite pet theory is that depression is the equivalent of autoimmune reaction for the brain. The same way we need some exposure to dirt to calibrate our immune system to not go berserk with some food allergies or lupus, probably we need something in our life to calibrate our brains' loopback feeds.
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Re:Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases
by studentrob on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @01:15AM
(#11387122)
So, people who've led relatively normal, successful lives with good relationships and have depression might be experiencing it so deeply because they haven't had much exposure to sadness? Sounds like a reasonable theory to me.
That would also explain how people are able to get out of unexplainable depression after a period of time, and why people sometimes seem to seek out more sadness when they're already sad. They're looking for perspective.
Awareness is the goal of some forms of meditation. I'd like to see more studies on the effects of meditation on those who have various forms of depression.