Depression.

[Relambrien]

Re: Depression.

Why are you assuming you can't have one without the other?

If you'll allow me to interject here...

When something makes you "happy," isn't what it's really doing something more along the lines of making you feel better than normal? And when you feel sad, isn't that feeling worse than normal? If you can only feel one state, and it doesn't change, then that becomes the baseline and "happiness" cannot exist, because you cannot feel better. "Sadness" cannot exist either, because you cannot feel worse.

But I'm no psych major, so I could be completely off. This is just what I got out of thinking about it.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Depression.

Emotional dichotomies. If one extreme exists, then there is a good chance it's opposite exists as well. What does it mean to be happy if one never experiences sadness?

Right now, I am neither happy nor sad. If right now my hot nextdoor neighbor knocked on my door and kissed me on the cheek, I'd be happy. This happiness is not defined as a complete lack of sadness, but the good feelings I felt as a result of the positive stimuli. Further, I'm not comparing the experience to any negative stimuli to verify that I am happy. I am perfectly capable of happiness without knowing sadness.

Happiness and sadness are not the only two feelings out there. Moreover, even if you lump all emotions into favorable and unfavorable categories, there are stimuli that elicit an indifferent response. Ergo, even if you assume that one can only know happiness if they can compare it to a different feeling, you can know you are happy by comparing it to a base of indifference.

[Squeek]

Re: Depression.

If you're going to say that all human emotions have an opposite, and you also say that depression is a disease, then happiness is a disease.

Do we diagnose anti-happiness pills to those who constantly experience euphoria when exciting things happen in their lives?

[rzr]

Re: Depression.

No, if that diagnosis causes the subject to react in a negative mannor. But there must be a way to get around the barrier of depression without the medical field.

[Reach]

Re: Depression.

For another example of overdiagnosis, check out autism. It seems like autism is the new ADD for kids today

The new ADD? I think that's pretty far off base. Autism is very serious in most cases and I haven't seen very many cases of it misdiagnosed, especially in comparison to ADD, as it isn't hard to identify. If a kid is autistic, you can tell. Maybe you're mistaking it (or they mistakingly informed you) for a mild autism spectrum disorder, such as Aspergers...which can be entirely different.

For some it may be a serious neurological defect, but for the most part I believe depression to be a by-product of certain unhealthy cultural practices.

This is an interesting point. From the research done on depression there is no doubt that it is associated with abnormal neural activity and levels of particular neurotransmitters. But the actual diagnosis can become incredibly convoluted when you consider environmental factors acting on a person, for example, incredibly high levels of chronic stress. There's no doubt that these things can change your chemistry, so treatment on a neurological level doesn't stop the problem...it's kind of like trying to smoke to relieve stress.

Treatments are often effective for people that are chronically depressed for reasons that aren't obvious, or have very serious clinical depression, but right now our knowledge of the exact mechanics of depression and how we treat it is lacking, and as such we do have people on meds that shouldn't be, or don't need to be.

However, I think it's important that we don't underestimate the potential benefits of seeking treatment in many individuals. TCAs, MAOIs and SSRIs, etc can be extremely effective with many depressed individuals. Most of the problems arise from getting the wrong medications and or failing to switch drugs. The problem with the medical treatment of depression right now is that we can't narrow it down to any *single* underlying cause...but rather, it can be caused by a variety of things, and most of our treatments currently only handle one of them.

Let's take Prozac for example, a commonly prescribed SSRI. Some studies have shown it to work extremely effectively, yet I've read some recently research that shows it works at placebo level. The problem is that it's only a Serotonin re-uptake inhibitor...it does not treat any of the other potential problems. A lot of people get on a med that is not effective for them, and fail try to different medications. To make it worse many psychiatrists have not read enough of the recent research on treatments and fail to prescribe the most effective ones. So yea, you get highly depressed people on a med, that takes a few weeks to start working anyway...they initially get a placebo effect but that starts to go away, and then the drug doesn't end up working for them and they kill themselves. It's pretty sad, but without failure I suppose we can't have progress. Hopefully depression is something we can treat with greater ease in the future.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Depression.

The new ADD? I think that's pretty far off base. Autism is very serious in most cases and I haven't seen very many cases of it misdiagnosed, especially in comparison to ADD, as it isn't hard to identify. If a kid is autistic, you can tell. Maybe you're mistaking it (or they mistakingly informed you) for a mild autism spectrum disorder, such as Aspergers...which can be entirely different.

Yes two of the five kids (they were all six or seven years old, by the way) that just seemed to be bad kids were noted as having Aspergers. And given the place, I imagine the documentation on the kids was just incomplete and perhaps all five of them just had some mild form of autism. I'll be the first person to admit that I don't know a lot about autism, but that's what I was told they had, and they just seemed spoiled to me. Nothing was really wrong with them except they threw tantrums more often.

[devonin]

Re: Depression.

For another example of overdiagnosis, check out autism. It seems like autism is the new ADD for kids today

Yes two of the five kids (they were all six or seven years old, by the way) that just seemed to be bad kids were noted as having Aspergers

Aspergers != Autism

You're saying something roughly comperable to "a bunch of people have twisted ankles, therefore, look at all these broken legs"

I meet pretty much every listed "symptom" of asperger's, and I am so far from being autistic that I utterly can't see a comparison between the two.

I also don't think that asperger's is mis-diagnosed (insofar as you have to be qualified in order to make a diagnosis) I think, though, that it -is- incredibly commonly self-diagnosed incorrectly, because a lot of kids like to use it as an excuse to hide behind instead of solving their own problems.

As an aside with respect to ADD being mentioned: I absolutely believe that ADD is a valid disorder, that many people have. However, I think that ADHD is simply the excuses version of "I'm a bad parent who can't control my children, make it be not my fault" but that's just me, and I'm a notorious cynic.

Why are you assuming you can't have one without the other?

This happiness is not defined as a complete lack of sadness, but the good feelings I felt as a result of the positive stimuli. Further, I'm not comparing the experience to any negative stimuli to verify that I am happy. I am perfectly capable of happiness without knowing sadness.

You aren't consciously comparing the good feelings to previous negative feelings in order to determine that you are happy but you are subconsiously doing it. Emotional states are all felt in relation to other states. You aren't "happy" you're "Happier than normal"

You need sadness in order to have happiness simply because if there were only two states 'normal' and 'happy' then 'normal' would be the 'negative' one, which amounts basically to there only being happiness and sadness.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Depression.

Aspergers != Autism

Ok, I get it. We can drop this. I've already noted that I don't know much about the subject. I only thought they were similar because at the summer camp in which I worked both of the disorders (aspergers, functional autism) were lumped together in a specific group of disorders which had to do with financial support for attending the camp and both got free county-financed "shadows" (like a babysitter to provide one on one support for the child with the disorder).

You aren't consciously comparing the good feelings to previous negative feelings in order to determine that you are happy but you are subconsiously doing it. Emotional states are all felt in relation to other states. You aren't "happy" you're "Happier than normal"

You need sadness in order to have happiness simply because if there were only two states 'normal' and 'happy' then 'normal' would be the 'negative' one, which amounts basically to there only being happiness and sadness.

Hedonistic adaptation is a *****.

Do you have an article to support your claim that, "Emotional states are all felt in relation to other states?" I can't really argue against what you're saying my subconscious is doing.

[devonin]

Re: Depression.

Do you have an article to support your claim that, "Emotional states are all felt in relation to other states?" I can't really argue against what you're saying my subconscious is doing.

I need an article to support logic?

Every qualitative judgement about everything is done in relation to other things. If I showed you a picture of a man standing in front of a plain white background, and asked you "Is this man tall?" You couldn't answer, because you have no context for comparison to gauge whether he is or not.

"Does this taste good?" only makes sense because you've tasted things which are bland and things which are distasteful as well. You couldn't say of the very first thing you ever ate "This is delicious" and actually mean it. You'd have no basis for comparison to make the judgement.

"Does this make you happy?" requires you to compare your mental state with previously experienced ones, and gauge roughly where this situation falls on the spectrum of your experiences.

To me, seeing my parents when I've been away at school for 8 months makes me happy, because I'm comparing it to the months where they weren't around, and the memories of previous encounters with my family which were positive.

If I'd grown up in a heavily abusive family, seeing my parents when I've been away at school for 8 months would be incredibly different. Comparing the situation to the time apart from them would cast the encounter in a much more negative light, because compared to previous experiences, the thought of seeing them again is negative.

The saying 'Ignorance is bliss' is generally used to imply that not knowing about all the bad things in the word is a positive thing, because they are depressing and bring you down. But virtually everyone who is not that kind of ignorant is perfectly willing to accept all that bad, and the nigh universal reason why is "Because it makes me appreciate the good that much more"

To phrase it another way, and to quote one of the great philosophers of our era: Beavis.

"Some stuff has to suck so other stuff can be cool"

Edit: Heck lets throw some dubious diagrams in here as well.

Say that we have a line like this:

|-------------|-------------|
H             N             S

Where H= The best things you experience (happiness), N= Average non-emotionally impacting experiences (Normalcy), and S= The worst things you experience (sadness)

And another line like this:

|-------------|
H             N

Which of these, on the whole, is the happier experience?

|------X------|-------------|
H             N             S


|------X------|
H             N

If the single most negatively feeling thing you've ever experienced was here:

|-------------|------------X|
H             N             S


|------------X|
H             N

Then the above experience is substantially better than the worst thing you've experienced in the first system, and only a little better than the worst thing you've experienced in the second system.

I suppose it is personal preference whether you'd be willing to accept the very bad in order to also experience the very good, or whether you'd prefer to simply stay close to the baseline as much as possible.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Depression.

First of all, your example of seeing your parents doesn't seem all that relevant because you're comparing two completely different stimuli. What I think you're trying to say is that given a healthy relationship with your parents, you'd feel happier visiting them if you were capable of feeling sadness.

Second, finding something palatable is absolutely not controlled by comparison to other foods. You can say, "This is delicious," without comparing it to something else. What you can't say is, "This is much tastier than that," without comparison. For example, if a baby was abused by its parents and was fed nothing but varieties of nutritionally enhanced dirt, all tasting horrible but all tasting differently, I doubt that baby would ever find any variety of it palatable. It wouldn't learn to enjoy the least atrocious dirt. It still makes it gag. It will enjoy the least horrible dirt more than the worst, but it wouldn't be delicious.

I get what you're saying with your diagrams. In the first scenario, that good feeling is 75% as good as you'll ever feel, when in the second scenario the same feeling is 50%. But for your explanation to make sense you have to assume that hedonistic adaptation. That people will naturally shift into the first scenario. Neutral feelings in the first scenerio will make those of the second depressed. However, what I've been arguing from the start is a man that doesn't have the propensity to feel depressed. He can't feel bad. So a normal person may appreciate good feelings more than my hypothetical happy man, but the positive stimuli evokes the same response.

[devonin]

Re: Depression.

So a normal person may appreciate good feelings more than my hypothetical happy man, but the positive stimuli evokes the same response.

My whole point is that I disagree with this assertion of yours. You'll notice in my diagram that if you count it out, the first example, the happy stimulus is 20 -'s happier than the worst thing they have experienced, and in the second, the happy stimulus is 6 -'s happier than the worst thing they have experienced.

You seem to be claiming that in both cases (20 -s' better, and 6 -'s better) the person will react the same way, and I simply don't see how that makes any kind of sense.

[All_That_Chaz]

Re: Depression.

Well for me to be saying that I would have to be asserting that the relation to the worst experience possible is meaningless. I would have to be asserting that happiness is a measurable quantity, the meaning of which is described entirely by that measurement, not by that measurements relation to another measurement.

However, I imagine, as most things are, it is a combination our two ideas.

Regardless, we may have to agree to disagree. We're not getting anywhere.

[Reach]

Re: Depression.

Well, Devonin was right when he said: "Every qualitative judgment about everything is done in relation to other things". However, saying that you need "sadness" in order to have "happiness" is only looking at it from one perspective. It boils down to the semantics of the concepts being argued here (a common CT theme it seems).

Mood/emotion in itself is an improperly defined concept. Self report of feelings is most certainly subjective and qualitative, but you could look it from a quantitative perspective by looking at activity in the pleasure centers in the brain (e.g. nucleus accumbens). This is not subjective. You could most certainly experience only happiness (x level of activity) without ever having to reflect on sadness (however unlikely this might be). This seems to be what Chaz is getting at.

So sadness is not really a requirement, though you still have to define a base rate for happiness in order to give it a definition, which means that the concept is still relative, leading back to Devonin. If I were to define emotion using a neurological scale I think I'd ditch the dichotomy all together and just define your emotion as feeling x amount of happiness.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Depression.

Gender can be defined quantitatively by looking at Somatostatin expressing neurons in the BSTc. Would the correlate to defining sadness as the absence of happiness be defining femininity as the absence of masculinity?