Sexual compatibility or common interests?

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There is not ALWAYS an environmental trigger. Usually there is, but not always. This is true of many psychological disorders--for instance, most psychopaths have both a genetic component to their issues and also grow up in an abusive environment (like Ted Bundy for example, who's early childhood was full of neglect and abuse)...but not all of them. Some, who have a strong enough genetic component, may experience a relatively supportive and happy childhood but still develop psychopathy later in life (like Jeffrey Dahmer, who's childhood was pretty normal). Early "bad environment" is not always the trigger you think it is. Sometimes epigenetic factors happen in a way we can't predict, and genes get turned on/off and effect our behaviour in a way that can't be credited to environment alone. We are just beginning to study epigenetics and how they effect us, it is a relatively new field of science.

Nature and nurture are blended factors in the development of most neurological differences like mood disorders and other psychological/developmental issues like autism. This has been known for years and well established by shedloads of research. Your ideas about neurology are out of date and have been debunked--otherwise doctors would still be telling all of us here that we are autistic because we had "refridgerator mothers".

Psychopathy, unlike anxiety and depression has a direct genetic component.



Sure. Epigenetics appears to affect some traits that are in the grey-zone between inherited and environmental.



Never said I supported the "refrigerator mother" model. In fact, I talked about depression and anxiety specifically, and not autistic traits. Most autistic traits are inherited, but not all of them. Some are caused by environment, and that goes for a few that are diagnostic of ASD as well. Most specifically, some diagnostic traits are failures to adapt, and that's not inherited.

Some autistic people inherit traits that have nothing to do with autism...it's called COMORBIDITY. This model that you, MissAlgernon, and Face_of_Boo are proposing that emotions are a response and have external causes has far too many counterexamples.

I have family members with cyclothymia(including my old man). He gets depressed periodically and it has nothing to do with the events in his life. My late uncle was also this way and he had manic episodes too but was never delusional or paranoid. Mood disorders run in my fathers side of the family.

As for SSRIs, prozac isn't a magic bullet but the statistical data strongly suggest that for many, many people it really works well for clinical depression.

True. There IS a difference though between environmentally triggered depression(which many people experience in their lives), and ideopathic depression experienced by people with mood disorders. Women are more prone to mood swings, ideopathic depression, and anxiety during their reproductive years because those hormone cycles do affect brain chemistry.

That could certainly be possible....its just a bit far-fetched to suggest everyone with a given neurological condition or lack of neurological condition would have the same or simular personalities. As we can see on this very site neurodiverse people don't all have the same sort of personality considering most here are on the autism spectrum.

environmentally triggered depression can become mood-disorder depression if the person is stuck in the environment long enough to where it starts effecting their brain function. Not to say no recovery is possible, but it doesn't have to lack environmental factors to be the mood disorder depression. It also depends on how long the symptoms go...like if someone says they've been feeling down for a couple days because something that upset them they wouldn't be able to get a depression diagnoses...but if its been say a couple months for instance than its possible their situational depression has become a disorder.

I think you are very lucky if you can remain sexually compatible for decades--it is likely that any given couple will become out of sync for significant periods of time due to aging and health issues. One of the big factors in treating mental health is the impact of sexual side effects, which in turn affect relationships.

I recently learned from a nutritionist that the body needs sufficient protein to produce serotonin. So, if the protein levels are too low one can be more prone to depression. This would be something environmental, but it is not the type of environmental factor we normally think of when we think of what might cause depression. We usually look at life circumstances, family situation, socio-economic status, emotional experiences, etc., not necesssarily DIET, although diet can be influenced by a few of those factors.

I just watched my daughter's health plummet after she declared herself to be a vegetarian, even though she was eating complete proteins. One of the ways her health plummeted was mood-related. But, in order to get the same number of grams of protein from a vegetarian diet as one can get from meat, one has to eat almost three times the volume of food. My daughter was not eating enough, and even *I* could not eat that much food to get enough protein.

This is not a statement against vegetarianism - I know many people who do well. But, perhaps, in my family our bodies have a composition that requires much more protein intake. Our diet changed according to the nutritionist's advice, mainly by increasing protein and fat. Moods are up, and my husband and I both have started losing weight with significantly less effort. We did not eliminate any foods, only the proportions changed. We had previously been eating a "low meat" diet and ate several vegetarian meals a week (including plenty of beans and grains for protein). This was for both financial and "health" purposes, only to find out that, for us, it wasn't so healthy.

It's important to pay attention to the type of protein, because different foods contain have different amino acid profiles.

The amino acid precurser of serotonin is tryptophan -- so the issue isn't sufficient protein/complete proteins intake, per se, it's sufficient tryptophan intake.

if one takes tryptophan supplements, will that be enough?

Dairy products are one of the best tryptophan sources.
No, it isn't true that you need to eat so much extra food in a vegetarian diet. Protein deficiency is almost inexistant in vegetarian diets (there are statistics), but it's a bit more prevalent in a minority of vegan diets, especially imbalanced vegan diets such as macrobiotic vegan or more generally the kind of diet where the only protein sources are grains and legumes. Some vegans often rely too much on wheat and soy to cover their nutritional needs and of course that's unhealthy...
The most common deficiencies in vegetarian diets are iron and vitamin B12, followed by vitamin D, and anemia caused by those deficiencies can affect mood and look like depression or exhaustion.

For some of us, mood swings STILL happen even with healthy diet and exercise........

It is clear that you and rdos is not that familiar with mood disorders. But you still dodged the counterpoint I made about people I know and have known IRL who have/had severe mood swings without becoming full blown psychotic.

And you're not even addressing conditions like Borderline Personality Disorder which often have triggered mood swings that quickly become ideopathic along with panic attacks that are pretty extreme.

I'd like to see some stats about suicide being more common in autistic people. Because it is MUCH more common in people with mood disorders like (type 1)bipolar as well as schizophrenics. People with PTSD and BPD also have high suicide rates.




Nature is imperfect. That's why you have lethal genetic diseases that still persist like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Lethal dominant genes are the ones that get wiped out quickly. But lethal recessive genes continue to be passed along. And that might include genes that make people prone to suicide.

I don't think we argue that mood swings are only environmental. I know a few people that experience them, and some that don't (in my family), so I'm pretty sure that has a genetic component. However, the view of "big pharma" is that basically all depression and anxiety is inherited, so the only thing you can do is to medicate. That is a stupid view that is incorrect. Also, I don't believe in the "brain-substance-inbalance" crap either. Low levels of serotonin can just as well be a symptom of depression as a cause. That's not been proved.

I was only answering Nerdygirl's post about vegetarianism. Don't make conclusions based on nothing. I never said that food was a main cause of mood disorders. You're saying things you don't know about people at all, and if you continue to imply that the rest of the world is so ignorant, please add my posts to your ignore list because if there's one thing I hate, it's posts with a condescending, superior tone. Thank you in advance.

It was recently published: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/ ... er-average

What they found was that among low-functioning autistics, epilepsy and drowning was common causes of early death, while among high-functioning, suicide was the leading cause of early death.



That doesn't contradict the results, because those are also along the neurodiversity spectrum.