“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low serotonin levels

Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by tsimionescu on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @02:06AM (#32162035)

It's very funny to describe SSRIs or SNRIs essentially as "happy pills". They are very unpleasant drugs to take, especially in the first month or so when starting to use them, and no one would be using them if they didn't feel there is a serious problem in their lives.

Not to mention, depression takes several forms, and not all of them are related to unhappiness. A common form is related to anxiety, with people experiencing a constant feeling that something awful is about to happen, sometimes getting terrible panic attacks. Given that many of these people live in objectively and subjectively extremely safe environments, much safer than at any other time in history, it's very hard to take seriously any environmental theory of this kind.

Edit: corrected one bad auto-correct typo ("problem", not "purulente") .

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by bmitc on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:22PM (#32170860)

This site has an unbelievable amount of armchair-science that gets rattled off. You are right, because depression and anxiety are primarily biological phenomena.

People looking for an actual expert discuss these things should watch Robert Sapolsky's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

For example, in the talk, he points out one of the most telltale signs of depression is waking up early, which is completely backwards from the common perception that depression is someone staying in bed all day.

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by imtringued on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:30AM (#32162628)

>no one would be using them if they didn't feel there is a serious purulente in their lives.

You are playing into the argument, people often don't have a choice to avoid a depression inducing environment, they only have the choice of using drugs or not.

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by bmitc on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:20PM (#32170840)

Environment is only one component of certain types of depression. It is primarily a biological phenomenon.

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by carabiner on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @02:17AM (#32162118)

Would you rather be safe in prison for 100 years, or free in a world for 1 day where you could die?

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by tsimionescu on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @02:34AM (#32162254)

I know for sure that I have much more anxiety when I'm in an unsafe environment than a safe one, regardless of how free I am in each. Lack of freedom does lots of bad things to your mind, but anxiety isn't one of them.

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by olyjohn on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @02:39PM (#32170289)

Life isn't like that though. This question is kind of counter-productive.

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Re:“No convincing evidence” that depression is caused by low... by winocm on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:34AM (#32162662)

I prefer death.

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