Depression - Nature and Nurture?

[Satchmo Distel]

My experience of depression is that it can hit me during objectively "successful periods" of life as well as unsuccessful ones. In other words, it's not always correlated with "environment". I also have ancestors who died from depression-related causes, directly or indirectly.

This is making me lean towards feeling there's a large genetic component, but I can also see how being surrounded by depressed adults as a child made depression feel normal. I didn't recognize those moods and behaviours as "depression" until much later because the word was not in my culture's vocabulary until I was 16-18.

I would welcome others' views on this.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'd side with nature. It was only when I got prozacced in my mid-20s that I realised I'd probably been depressed most of my teenage years. And people saying 'but you have lots of good things going on, what have you got to be depressed about?' kind of proves the point that it's not (just) about circumstances.

Of course when bad stuff is happening in your life it can be a trigger too. But more likely if you're already prone to it.

I'd also say that 'nature' =/= 'unavoidable' or 'unalterable'. It's possible to counteract any natural tendency and mitigate any increased risk.

[Satchmo Distel]

Absolutely. Nature and nurture are always merged in a feedback loop so you can use nurture to modify nature, and that's partly what keeps us going. Even things like adopting a kitten or going for a long walk can make a huge difference. Being willing to be open and not bottled up is also important.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Personally I think that we as humans have removed our lives so far from what as giant primates we evolved to do - lie about under a tree, eat a banana now again, go for a stroll, watch the zebras down at the waterhole - that it's impossible to imagine we haven't all exploded somehow. Maybe we all have. So many people are now recognising and getting help for depression and anxiety and other mental health issues that it has to be the case that nature in the sense of our genetics is saying "you shouldn't be doing this, you know". Our very recent ancestors in genetic terms didn't spend a fraught hour driving in traffic every morning to go and be herded into a pen to prepare spreadsheets about things. Cats don't do those things and look how happy those little bastards are.

[anton pulisov]

Yes. We are hunter gatherers.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

We weren't even hunters until the ice age which is only about 1000 generations ago.

[Lang Spoon]

Really? Did Homo Erectus/Heidelburgensis (for sure sp) etc only scavenge?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I have no idea. Nor does anyone else. But I'm fairly sure to return to the thrust of my main point that they didn't spend their days stressing about selling corporate insurance or about trying to buy stuff on e bay before a particular sale window ended.

[Patrick Thistle]

That's the interesting part of the universal basic income idea. How many rubbish jobs will just disappear because they aren't necessary any more.

Of course we need properly intelligent AI to really take over a lot of stuff as part of the UBI. And then abolish money altogether, figure out space travel, sort out a common language and basically become the Culture.

[G-Man]

The premise of this thread is not really making clear what we are talking about. There are all kinds of depression, and a web of interconnected issues. You might as well ask: "Food: is it nature or production?"