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A comment on Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study. Parent comment

Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by KarlKemp on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @09:54PM (#29733005)
It's the important & useful of the two endpoints they measured. Anything will have a positive effect on depression if it comes with a lot of high-tech vodoo and people in lab coats. Only it won't last and it will the "yeah, I guess I'm feeling better"-level of improvement.
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Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by eru on Thursday December 30, 2021 @01:49AM (#29734331)
> Only it won't last and it will the "yeah, I guess I'm feeling better"-level of improvement.

Who says it won't last? Most depressions actually do get better by themselves.

How do you think humanity has survived so far?

(Most, but not all. And even if it eventually gets better without meds, there was still a lot of suffering.)

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Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by lazyasciiart on Thursday December 30, 2021 @02:36AM (#29734574)
It's quite possible humanity has survived because most people never get depressed. You need to be quite clear about definitions to have a meaningful conversation on this.
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Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by webinvest on Friday December 31, 2021 @07:33PM (#29754118)
Unfortunately your genes don’t care about whether you’re happy or not beyond your gene’s needs for survival and reproduction.
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Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by eru on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @11:20PM (#29805088)
Yes. And given the prevalence of continued prevalence of depression, there might be some evolutionary benefit for the genes that also cause depression.

No clue whether it's the depression itself, or whether that's just a side-effect of something else that's useful.

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Re:Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective... by eru on Thursday December 30, 2021 @10:42PM (#29744633)
Maybe. So please ignore the part where I speculate about evolution, if you want to.

Empirically, most clinical depressions get better by themselves today.

Similarly, most alcoholics improve by themselves.

(Of course, effective treatment is still useful!)

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