<story><title>What happens in the brain to cause depression?</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-happens-in-the-brain-to-cause-depression-20240523/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>_rm</author><text>The culture of medicalizing depression perplexes me. There seems to be a staunch commitment to studying it as if it were like a disease of the brain tissue, like Alzheimer&amp;#x27;s, and staying well clear of simple explanations like &amp;quot;maybe the subject&amp;#x27;s life is shit?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Because it turns out, and trust me on this one, that having a shit life causes depression. In particular: a shit life that the subject feels &lt;i&gt;no hope&lt;/i&gt; of getting out of.&lt;p&gt;I suffered really severe, debilitating depression for years. I tried all the usual crap that know-nothings recommend, doing exercise and the like, and working hard to try and do better at life, but none of it budged the needle. Beyond that I was told I of course need to drug myself to feel better (SSRIs).&lt;p&gt;The depression was permanently solved, not by any of that, but just ditching my old life in full, and doing something else. Once your life stops being shit, you stop feeling depressed.&lt;p&gt;All the &amp;quot;chemical imbalance&amp;quot; talk is to avoid having to think about this, and instead reduces the problem in the same way a heroin addict does.&lt;p&gt;The main complexity in fixing it is that the subject often doesn&amp;#x27;t know their life is shit and just keeps trying to do that life better, or that they fear leaving that life will make things worse.&lt;p&gt;My non-psychologist tip for anyone suffering from severe depression like I was is simple: you have to make a very big, easy change to your life.&lt;p&gt;Big means not tweaking this or that, but completely changing everything. What&amp;#x27;s the most extreme change you could make, in your mind? Is it go and be a monk in Nepal for a couple of years? Then do that.&lt;p&gt;Easy means it can&amp;#x27;t be a struggle - if you&amp;#x27;re depressed you don&amp;#x27;t have the energy to do that.</text></comment>
<story><title>What happens in the brain to cause depression?</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-happens-in-the-brain-to-cause-depression-20240523/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>g3e0</author><text>I’m not an expert in the field, but I am someone who has recovered from depression. The “lack of serotonin” theory always made me laugh. It’s like if your computer was running abnormally and you said it “doesn’t have enough electricity”.&lt;p&gt;Neurotransmitters send signals. The amount of neurotransmitter tells you nothing about what information is actually encoded in those signals. You can transmit happy and sad music using electricity, for example. It seems to me that you can transmit happy and sad thoughts using neurotransmitters. (And of course the brain is much more complicated than a computer, because a computer “just” uses electricity, whereas in the brain some processing happens at each neuron, and signals coming in on one neurotransmitter can cause signals to leave in others.)&lt;p&gt;I see the term antidepressant as a bit of a misnomer. A drug that inhibits re-uptake of neurotransmitters will amplify the “loudness” of the signals. If you only have negative thoughts, and you take such a drug, your depression could realistically get worse (and this does happen to some people).&lt;p&gt;If you can get in to a positive feedback loop (e.g. an activity that leads to positive thoughts that lead to more of that activity) and _then_ start amplifying those signals, then these drugs can do wonders.</text></comment>