Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with depression?
by ncmncm on Sunday October 20, 2019 @11:25AM
(#21304704)
Once all fevers were "ague". Now we have flu (dozens of strains), malaria, encephalitis, toxemia, etc., with a different treatment for each.
Depression is still at the "ague" stage. For certain varieties, certain medications completely resolve them. For some, a treatment hasn't been identified. Approval of treatments is crippled by lack of diagnostic tools, so to test one, it has to be used on people who have all kinds, and then it only helps the small minority of them who have what it's good for. Statistically, one that works 100% for the actual illness it treats looks like it helps only 10-15% of the sample.
Depression is still at the "ague" stage. For certain varieties, certain medications completely resolve them. For some, a treatment hasn't been identified. Approval of treatments is crippled by lack of diagnostic tools, so to test one, it has to be used on people who have all kinds, and then it only helps the small minority of them who have what it's good for. Statistically, one that works 100% for the actual illness it treats looks like it helps only 10-15% of the sample.