Via Scientific American, a behavioral ecologist and a psychiatrist suggest that a major depressive incident may make people better able to solve complex problems and social dilemmas :
Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.
This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.
During my scholastic career, I frequently got depressed when attempting to work math problems (took basic high school algebra three times and still don’t understand it). I’d stare at the paper until the numbers started dancing, ruminating on the problem until I reached the correct solution: “That’s it; I am sooo fvcked.”
Then I’d throw up.
Which totally makes sense now, because of course serotonin function affects the gastrointestional tract as well as that lump at the top of the spinal column.
AhabTRuler
That is absolutely fascinating. And it would explain a great deal about my study techniques.
arguingwithsignposts
This, also. I’m so glad that depression isn’t a disorder, but an adaptation. Still sucks.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. I must be the goddamn smartest person on earth then!
geg6
Well, based on my own experiences, this is absolutely true. For good and ill. I know being very analytical makes me effective at problem solving. But it also makes me so self-critical that the black dog decides to settle in for a good long visit. All things being equal, I’d rather be me than a less self-aware and solution minded person like, say, your average teabagger.
Betsy
I find this difficult to grasp. When my partner is in the grip of major depression, all problems, however minor, seem completely insoluble to him. I mean, he’s brilliant at finding reasons why a given solution won’t work, which is a kind of analytical skill, but ultimately that is the opposite of helpful. It’s also not usually reflective of reality. Although he can always come up with a reason X or Y won’t work, usually, if he would give X or Y a chance, they would work fine. So it seems like a false skill to me – it seems incisive and analytical, but it doesn’t bring him to the right answers.
General Winfield Stuck
Maybe this validates those polls that claim republicans are happier than dems. And also teh stupiderer. Though they seem quite mental recently, we should experience a wave of smarter wingnuts on the horizon, and Peak Wingnut will have been averted, at least til Sarah Serendipity gets elected Queen of the Viking Hordes, and the shit starts all over again.
asiangrrlMN
@Betsy: I think it’s more of a long-term thing. I mean, in the grips of severe depression, no, one is not going to make good decisions (or any at all). If said person makes it through the severe depression, then one can apply one’s hard-earned thinking skills in a more productive fashion.
Linkmeister
@General Winfield Stuck: Nah. Republicans are happier than Dems because Dems have empathy and the Repubs have none.
Dave C
Evolutionary Biology Jerry Coyne gives this hypothesis a thorough drubbing and .
Tom65
This would make Peter Daou a fucking genius, which is too depressing to contemplate.
Hey, wait a minute…
Dave C
@Dave C:
Wow, html fail on my part. What I was trying to say is that Coyne has two interesting posts critiquing the idea that depression is an adaptation here:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/is-depression-an-evolutionary-adaptation-part-1/
and here:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/is-depression-an-evolutionary-adaptation-part-2/
debit
Interesting. As a math phobic, that’s how I deal with math issues when I’m without a calculator; break it down into non-panic inducing chunks and just hope my I don’t mess up the running tally until I get to the end.
geg6
Betsy: I think, though I haven’t read the article, that the idea is that, when not in the midst of a depression, the analytical ability serves us well. I generally am only a mild depressive and never took meds for it. But I had one very, very bad period. Otherwise, I just have the normal ups and downs. I do, however, still analyze everything I do from every angle. I analyze everything. I over analyze and sometimes fall into the depressive trap of seeing only why things won’t work. But I do know that this type of thinking has also been a major factor in my successes in life.
HL Guy
This is weak thinking, based on an adaptationist perspective- “If something persists in the face of natural selection, it must be adaptive.” Umm, no.
Many diseases persist despite having no adaptive value. See: heart attacks, cancer. Unless you have actual *evidence* that depressives are better at solving complex analytical problems, and do so better over the long term (which could be significantly shortened by, say, suicide), don’t tell me any just-so stories about depression being adaptive.
Betsy
@geg6:
I looked at it, and they seemed to be suggesting that it was actually the depression itself that triggered the analytical thinking – i.e., while depressed, you think deeply/brood about everything. In other words, it’s DURING the depression, not after it, that the thinking is sharper. (C.f. their example about people who get depressed while solving a math problem doing better than those who don’t.) That seems to me to be absolutely counter to every experience I’ve had with people in the midst of serious depressive episodes.
Betsy
p.s. I know that the plural of anecdote /= data, but their research seems pretty thin to me, esp. after reading Dave C’s links.
Comrade Mary
The whole point of cognitive behaviour therapy is to get depressed people to look for cognitive distortions, then correct them so that they can be happier.
Raw analytical skills don’t always lead you to the correct conclusions. Being smart doesn’t necessarily make you wise, or kind, or generous to others or to yourself. Some people can read Ayn Rand in their teens, then grow out of it, others end up writing for Reason.
I suspect that all other things being equal, more analytical people may be more prone to getting depressed. Biochemical imbalances and stressful live events obviously are big factors, too, but the tendency to pick apart and ruminate, coupled with a pessimistic outlook and some biochemical or external trigger, can push susceptible people right into full-blown depression. It’s ironic that they same thing that gets them in there may be able to get them out again.
smiley
At the risk of repeating my self here, when listening to the media about science, you should just ignore it or take it “with a grain of salt”. That includes Scientific American. For example, I was watching an episode of “Good Morning America” some years ago, and Charlie Gibson announced that two articles about heart health had just been published in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association. Both prestigious journals. The problem was that they contradicted each other. Charlie looked into the camera and said, ” What are we supposed to believe?” Journalists believe that their standard for truth is true in all fields. Please don’t take any of this kind of shit seriously until it has been replicated numerous times. Especially stuff dealing with human behavior. /soapbox
Doug
Assuming this makes a depressed person smarter than a non-depressed person is a leap in the wrong direction. It’s akin to assuming that people who need eyeglasses have better vision than those who don’t. Non-depressed people are able to solve problems without falling into depression.
I’m not trying to be mean about it. I love many smart people with chronic depression and have suffered brief bouts of it myself. But the depression is an adaptation, not a feature.
Chad N Freude
I’ve read half the article (and will finish, I promise) but my attention was caught by this quote from the first paragraph:
The authors appear to conclude that therefore depression is not a malfunction. The idea that “pressures of evolution” should have produced a particular result as the starting point for their argument leaves a bit to be desired in the rigorous logic department. It seems to me. In my humble opinion.
shelley matheis
Well yeah, Eeyore is smarter than Pooh. Heavens, in the book Pooh is constantly referred to as ‘a Bear of little brain.”
Of course Eeyore also thinks a busted balloon is a great birthday present.
asiangrrlMN
@Betsy: Then maybe I should have actually read the article first. So sorry. I just drew the natural conclusion that they meant AFTER the depression, not during.
wasabi gasp
I found math to be comforting, it has no tolerance for bullshit.
Laura W
Best post ever, Anne Laurie, and the title is delicious.
My favorite part of the article (bolded emphasis mine):
Brings to mind two things:
I wrote a friend just two nights ago: “I was up all last night ruminating on all this.”
And advice from a very wise and trusted spiritual mentor long ago: “Don’t pathologize The Mystery.”
Chad N Freude
@HL Guy: OK, you got there first.
General Winfield Stuck
@Linkmeister:
Though I always question new theories related to mental illness, as there is a cottage industry of speculation and dubious studies about this infinitely complex subject, I have always believed firmly in the oft used axiom of “no pain no gain” unscientific, simplistic, yes, but also true IMHO.
Since I have in the past, had my share of bouts with the black reeper of blues, I choose to believe it makes you smarterer as a whip.
Laura W
@Laura W: Well, not ALL of that bold emphasis was mine.
Whatever.
geg6
Comrade Mary: You explained exactly how I feel about this better than I did. Yes, I think analytical personalities are prone to depression. And I, for one tend toward pessimism and. Turning things over and over in my head. Mostly, it has served me well. Sometimes, something goes out of whack and it takes me down a dark hole. I’ve only gotten treatment once (as I said, I’m a mild depressive) and I’m a big believer in talk therapy for people like me. It allows you to use those analytical skills to pull yourself out. Worked for me and my therapist taught me some things to try to pull myself out before I hit bottom again.
Chad N Freude
Re Scientific American: At one time it was pretty scientific. Over the years, it has become a moderately entertaining and visually attractive (read that as really marketable to a much wider audience than when it was publishing boring science stuff), but not a particularly good source of scientific reportage or thought. For my science fix, I go to New Scientist.
smiley
@wasabi gasp: Me too. Especially geometry. The logic was just too natural for me.
Anne Laurie
No, no — the ‘fun’ part was a busted balloon and a pot to put it in. That’s what I’ve always loved about the Tao of Eeyore: When you’re given an accidentally pre-broken present, plus the leftovers from what should have been the other gift, you can still put the bits together and create a new way to amuse yourself. As long as you’re not the kind of optimist who expects anything better from the Universe than scraps, remainders, and apologetic explanations!
plaindave
Did I miss the comments regarding the link between the digestive parts and the mood parts? Throwing up after seems right to me. But what about causation in the other direction? Poor digestion to depression?
Chad N Freude
@wasabi gasp: Math, yes. Some teachers of math not so much.
I always loved math because of the certainty. My son also: in his early teens, he told me that he liked math because of “the way everything fits together”.
Laura W
@Anne Laurie:
May I introduce you to Pique Assiette Mosaics?
;-)
shelley matheis
Anne Laurie
@smiley: Oh, geometry I could handle. I scored in the low 70s for the NY state Reagents alegebra exam, and in the mid-90s for the equivalent geometry exam. But in those days, “everybody knew” that only boys were dyslexic, so the fact that I kept reversing numbers indicated I was lazy & willful. Geometry is about logic and symmetry, things I’m much more comfortable with.
kommrade reproductive vigor
This called obsessing and it ain’t a lot of fun. Nor is it productive.
Oh gee, that makes me feel so much better.
Look, to speak very simply there are two times you’d do this while depressed. One is if you’re focused on an actual event that’s causing the depression. The other is if your brain just decides it would be fun to make you fucking miserable. I don’t know about the first one, but with the second one, analysing shit that your brain is making up doesn’t help anything. It’s like saying a schizophrenic should pay close attention to the voices.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Over? Thank God these people aren’t oncologists.
smiley
@Chad N Freude: That’s really cool. I don’t have any kids (and never will) but that must make you proud. Is he going to in to something… never mind…
Anne Laurie
@Laura W:
Or quilting, papercrafts — or blogging, for that matter!
General Winfield Stuck
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Your comment made me laugh, In a serious way of course.
debit
@Chad N Freude: I actually liked math very much until 5th grade. That’s when I got an elderly teacher with issues. Perhaps it was early onset dementia, perhaps he had just ceased to give a crap. All I know is he lectured us on politics and his own, odd personal beliefs and biases, but he didn’t teach us math.
That was the year I was supposed to get the building blocks to lead me into Algebra, which started in 6th grade. I didn’t get them, and 6th grade math and every year after was a nightmare of just honestly not getting it and being accused of being either lazy or willfully ignorant. It left me convinced that I was just abysmally stupid and could never do it, since every one else found it so easy.
I deal with it now. I have to. I work in a tax and accounting office. Heh.
Chad N Freude
@smiley: He’s an adult and a lawyer, if that’s not oxymoronic.
smiley
@Anne Laurie: For me, I really surprised some teachers with how I did in geometry class. I was pretty average in high school – smoking pot all the time. I pretty well redeemed my self in college and graduate school, however – smoking pot all the time. (but not any more)
toujoursdan
Fascinating article.
This is a horrible simile but depression may work a bit like Sickle Cell anaemia does, where a mild form of the condition can be advantageous in that it sharpens the mind, but a lot can be a huge drawback.
This is a first article. It will be interesting to see if more research moves in this direction.
wasabi gasp
@Chad N Freude: In college, as a math major, I had a professor that was so bad that he factored into my decision to drop out and take a job offer in a completely different field. It turned out to be the right decision, but I never followed up on the promise to myself to continue the self-teaching that I began in his class. The guy was
no betterworse than an audio book of the text.smiley
@wasabi gasp: Has anyone here read Innumerancy?
wasabi gasp
@smiley: Anyone have not. ;)
Davis X. Machina
Geometry is about logic and symmetry, things I’m much more comfortable with.
I did very poorly in Algebra , but I aced geometry — you could draw diagrams, solve problems, graphically, it was easy. In Algebra 2 w/trig, the emphasis shifted to the Cartesian coordinate grid and all of a sudden, you could draw pictures of equations, even of whole systems of equations — and Trig was all triangles and circles. I aced Algebra 2. The teacher couldn’t believe it was the same kid.
Brachiator
Interesting and provocative, but flawed research. Evolutionary psychologists typically make the error of trying to find an unambiguously positive reason why a trait persists. They seem uncomfortable with the idea that some evolutionary outcomes may produce negative trade-offs.
For example, sickle cell trait appears to confer some immunity against malaria, but can come with health problems. Full on sickle cell kills you, so sickle cell trait is clearly preferable to death, so much so that the African sickle cell gene can be found in some people in Portugal who are otherwise “white.” Their ancestors, who lived in areas of Portugal with malaria, had children with African slaves. The beneficial sickle cell gene gave them a reproductive advantage.
Some people I know who have battled depression appear to break down problems into components. The only problem is that they don’t break them down in order to solve them, rather each component becomes a new stumbling block, and soon they are overwhelmed not with one big problem but with hundreds of smaller ones.
Still, this research is very promising, and with some cautions, may lead to fruitful treatment for depression.
Punchy
OT:
Good banking says the Phils win this game. If not……can I borrow some money?
Betsy
Ha!! I love this. I confess to having a knee-jerk reaction to a lot of this, since my partner’s major depression has made both our lives infinitely harder (his more than mine, of course). I actually do agree that therapists should help the patient address any external problems that they’re dealing with too; that can only help. But that’s different from saying depression is what happens when you need to do some deep thinking. Again, maybe it’s the dif between major and minor – NO ONE could ever confuse what my partner has with just being “blue” or angsty about the universe or anything like that. When it gets really bad, he can barely function.
Betsy
Also, this:
Some people I know who have battled depression appear to break down problems into components. The only problem is that they don’t break them down in order to solve them, rather each component becomes a new stumbling block, and soon they are overwhelmed not with one big problem but with hundreds of smaller ones.
This is *exactly* what happens with my partner. You describe it perfectly.
Betsy
Ack, that was supposed to be blockquoted!
Chad N Freude
Another quote from the article:
You know, like the appendix. For an apparently legitimate scholarly take on this idea, look at this. Short version: Stuff hangs around after it is no longer evolutionarily useful, like the vestigial appendix (which exists in other mammals besides humans), “the wings of the ostrich and the eyes of blind cavefish”. Money quote:
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Defeated by the forces of my own typing yet again.
Elizabelle
OT (it’s my Pooh side posting):
The Today show has hired Jenna Bush daughter Hager as a correspondent on educational issues.
Maybe you all discussed this on an earlier thread, maybe not. Haven’t read much yet …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/30/AR2009083001361.html?nav=hcmodule
ellaesther
I’ve been deeply depressed about Israel/Palestine since September 2000, and yet for all my endless, ceaseless, pitiless ruminations, I have not yet broken the problem down in a way that will allow me to solve it.
Well, no, that’s not quite right: I have. End the occupation, remove most of the settlements, establish a strong, durable Palestine, and share Jerusalem as the capital city of both peoples. FIXT!
But I’m still depressed because my ruminations have not led me to cracking the code on how to convince my (Israeli) people of my superior wisdom.
(Sorry. I know depression is no joke, not even a black joke about bloody political conflict. I’m just doing some I/P writing right now and my mind is stuck. Sorry. Carry on…).
wasabi gasp
@smiley: I smoked tons of pot while running the math in college, not so much because I was a big head, which I was, but because the math would flatten the high lickety-split. My wallet wasn’t very good with that math.
Chad N Freude
@Brachiator:
Maybe. I should read the actual paper they’re talking about in the Sci Am article before reaching a conclusion, but the reasoning here
isseems faulty.Xenos
If analyzing how evolutionary processes may have resulted in depression being a common trait, the point should not be whether it is ‘adaptive’ to ancient or modern life, but if it effects reproductive fitness.
Depression may very well have no direct effect on reproductive fitness, or may be a side effect of something very adaptive – such as the increasing cognitive abilities that have presented themselves in modern humans.
I have noticed are that some optimistic friends of mine could have benefited from some depression rather than jumping from one hare-brained scheme to another.
wasabi gasp
The article gives no insight into what’s the problem with theater majors.
General Winfield Stuck
I got better after I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.
Punchy
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….phills win.
Brachiator
@Chad N Freude:
I was being too kind to the article. It doesn’t clearly distinguish between clinical depression and “depressed mood states,” and then tries to hang an evolutionary explanation on too much. For example, some people can do “analytical rumination” without becoming depressed, so the authors confuse the behaviors that they believe are related to depression.
I looked at some other abstracts, but haven’t had time to read the full article. But as a rule psychologists have generally been wrong when they jump to connecting genes to specific behaviors with the claim that “Evolution makes us do it.”
The full article can be found here:
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=2009-10379-009
Chad N Freude
@Brachiator:
You could have stopped there.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude:
Okay, that was unfair. I know at least one psychologist who is actually really good at psychology. But the profession as a whole has a history of charlatanry, ill-conceived and untestable theories, and good intentions gone wrong.
Porlock Hussein Junior
Me, me! Fine book, and so is most of what Paulos has written. Highly recommended. Also, his book titled (approx) A Mathematician Plays the Market : outstanding, if by chance you’ve ever had the inclination to do that sort of thing.
Funny thing is, I read the second book, with its good treatment of “indexing”, which is the effect of being convinced that the right value of something is what everybody says it is, regardless of evidence — I read it, quite by chance, in my hotel room when I was out of town to attend an auction, at which the point is to figure out what things are really worth, independent of the valuations that are forced on your attention. Got new insight, anyway, if not any new brilliant bargain purchases.
mclaren
If this is true, I should have an IQ of about 900 by now. Every time I see another one of Obama’s betrayals of his campaign promises I get so depressed I want to lie down and die.
vacuumslayer
@General Winfield Stuck: That was the first thing that popped into my head, too. I do think there’s something to it. I can imagine that people who view the world in black and white and never think too hard about anything would naturally be a bit happier.
Jen R
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Thank you.
This is *just* what people with serious depression need — idiots coming along with their guessing-game “research” and giving more ammunition to the “just cheer up” brigade.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, I spent my fourth and fifth semesters as an engineering student in horrible depression, and then I finally hit the solution: switch to biology!
Sirkowski
I’m worse at math since I suffered from depression.
I think this study is trying too hard to cherry-pick answers that fit their hypothesis.
Brian Griffin
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Brian Griffin
@Brian Griffin:
I obviously can’t do blockquotes: I meant that “Thank god these people aren’t oncologists” was well said. Also.
and one of the commenters at http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/08/28/could-depression-be-natures-way-of-saying-think/ actually noted:
“And cancer is nature’s way of saying “Die”.