The doctor says you need your nausea. It is a message, and we must listen to the message. It will tell us what is wrong with you.

– A Nurse to Johann Hari, Lost Connections

Notes

theories of depression which explain the phenomenology of depression as a sort of global down-weighting of the signal from our here-and-now sensory experience in favor of a (negatively valenced) global prior.
- over-weighting some negative global priors over direct sensory evidence
"Depression" is the name we’ve given a set of experiences a properly functioning human nervous system generates when it receives signals from ‘the world’ that the way it is ‘playing the game of life’ is not ‘working.’
Depression is a name we have given a specific set of human nervous system experiences.
The experience of depression is real. The game the current cultural story tells us to play to alchemize the experience of depression does not work.
The depressed brain forms fewer and weaker synapses than usual. Each thought or need or urge is a stone thrown into a deep lake, producing no ripples. Communication between brain areas becomes weak and muffled. This is true for the very basic brain areas that (for example) regulate stomach contraction as much as for the very advanced brain areas that regulate your emotion, which is why sadness and stomach problems are both depression symptoms.
On the biochemical level, depression seems to often involve shortages of a chemical called BDNF – brain-derived neurotrophic factor
mixing sadness with anger and not being able to discern and feel them seperately
concepts
- labeling
- looping
- signaling
  - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_(Verhaltensbiologie)
When controlled for the Placebo Effect, Irving found that the average improvement on The Hamilton Scale from antidepressants was 1.8. For context, getting good, consistent sleep improves one’s Hamilton score 6.0 points.
The short version: Depression has a combination of biological, psychological, and social causes. You can address the social causes by changing your life circumstances (and research suggests people underestimate the potential benefits of making major life changes). You can address the psychological causes with therapy; possible therapies are diverse and complicated but I especially recommend “behavioral activation” therapy (where you try to keep a schedule and also do new, interesting things) and David Burns’ book Feeling Good. You can address the biological causes with a combination of lifestyle changes, medications, and supplements. Consider exercising more and adapting a modified Mediterranean diet. Consider taking antidepressants like escitalopram and bupropion, and supplements like l-methylfolate. Other non-chemical biological options include light therapy (safe and easy), transcranial magnetic stimulation (more complicated), and electroconvulsive therapy (difficult but extremely effective last-ditch solution). If something treats your depression, continue it for some length of time depending on the type of intervention, then consider withdrawing it to see if you can maintain your mood without it.

Notes

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