Posted by JANNBEAU on January 7, 2002, at 14:35:02
In reply to Re: effexor scares me » michelle a., posted by Dinah on January 7, 2002, at 8:56:27
> >Hi, I, too, agree that depression has always been around, at least for a very long time! However, Darwinian evolutionary theory implies "survival of the fittest" with respect to the gene pool. Survivors probably did not carry the genetic trait for depression. If they did carry depression genes, then they probably also carried genes for other, more adaptive behaviors that fostered survival. Those genes should have been amplified in the gene pool, while the genes causing depression would have gradually disappeared from the gene pool, especially as the gene pool is constantly being enlarged), leading to disappearance of depression. Or perhaps we just wouldn't find depression such a problem today. Instead, we perceive depression to have become more prevalent. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, since statistics aren't really available since "depression" isn't a reportable disease for most state public health agencies (who collect most of our morbidity and mortality statistics).
But, you cannot eliminate "nurture" from your equation. We do not seem, as a nation, to be nurturing our to become competent adults. Instead, we're leaving them alone without love, supervision, or role models. The loss of structure from our lives may contribute to depression, or, if depression is genetic, to expression of the gene as the clinical state of depression. The last comment suggests that "nature" and "nurture" are inextricable. If so, history has also shown that people are much a product of their environment and that a positive environment can compensate for, or significantly decrease some of the most devastating of the effects of "nature." This is illustrated by the progress of babies born addicted to crack cocaine who, when removed from the environment that produced them and placed into nurturing homes, are very little different from "normal" people. Much other historical data supports this concept, going all the way back to Harry Harlow's monkeys (and well before that time, too--remember marasmus--the wasting disease of infants left without nurturing care in orphanages?)..illustrating the power of the environment to determine fate.
Then, again, perhaps we ARE just spoiled rotten, we don't have to work hard, we have everything we need in life, we don't have to worry about where we'll get our next pair of Guess? jeans, much less our next meal, and we have much more time to titillate ourselves with our emotional problems. We like to hear ourselves talk and moan. We have powerful imaginations which, if not stopped, can carry us into the most horrible day-time nightmares just by pushing our THOUGHTS into the direction of horrible outcomes!
Then, again, and again, perhaps depression and some other mental illnesses are just a fabrication of the drug companies that make fortunes off those of us (I certainly belong to this group) who have "bought" into the medical model of disease and think that there is a pill to cure every ailment--those of us who take Effexor may or may not agree with the healing effects of this drug--I won't go there, now.
Who knows? I think I just like to hear myself rattle, too.
Cheers,
Jannbeau. . .People who were just too vulnerable to respond to a slap of common sense. There are biological vulnerabilities that affect our ability to function. Our ancestors had more than a little depression and anxiety. The most vulnerable individuals probably succumbed to illness or committed suicide. But their relatives probably had a slight advantage in survival due to increased perceptiveness and awareness of danger and more controversially perhaps some increased creativity. These relatives of the most severely affected lived to pass the genes on to us.
poster:JANNBEAU
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020103/msgs/89195.html