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Actually, the "chemical imbalance in the brain" theory is scientifically poor and baseless (yet the concept is extremely popular and promoted by big pharma), no one really knows whether depression is really caused by biological factors in the brain or not.

It has been proven tho, that people born after 1945 are 10 times more likely to have depression than those who were born before 1945.

Human genome can't change that fast - yet lifestyle changes much faster from one generation to another.

So rdos might be right, it is not probably be in the DNA or caused by some mutations.

Depression and anxiety are often reduced to simple chemical imbalance to make believe that SSRIs are the miracle cure. I'm not against their use, but many cases of depression and anxiety are caused by the environment so drugs are pretty much useless. Many people find swallowing SSRIs more convenient than stepping out of their comfort zone to make the environmental changes that will make them feel better.

often the path between the comfort zone and happiness is a pitfall-laden abyss.

So true.

We know there is an inheritability component to mood disorders like bipolar disorder--they run in families, like autism spectrums disorders and anxiety disorders and many other types of psychological/mental/developmental disorders. And it runs in families even between members who don't have regular contact with one another, so it can't be explained away as modeled behaviour and therefore situational. It's well established in medicine that this is so, there has been tonnes of peer-reviewed research for decades supporting this. I mean, do you really think you "learned" to be autistic from your parents, not that you were born that way? One is more susceptible to develope depression and anxiety because of genetic factors just like one is more likely to develop an ASD because of genetic factors. To argue against this is to argue against established science.

Some people have depression that does NOT respond to changes in the environment. There is already scientific evidence that clinical depression is caused by abnormally low levels of serotonin in certain regions of the brain.

I have experienced severe depression and for me personally, certain SSRIs like prozac are very effective at alleviating it. Not everyone is so lucky in that regard. Some people have depression so bad that it is unresponsive to medication, diet, exercise, environmental change, or anything other than electroconvulsive therapy.

For all your talk about neurodiversity, did you actually study neuroscience or biochemistry? Drugs that alter brain chemistry have a profound effect on mood. And DNA codes for PROTEINS. Some of those genes that are expressed in brain cells code for enzymes that synthesize and degrade neurotransmitters, receptor gated ion channels that open when a neurotransmitter binds to the active site, and regulatory proteins that modulate enzymes and receptors.

People with manic-depressive bipolar have a neurochemical oscillator in their brain that effects their mood regardless of what happens in their environment. That is what you fail to understand about the human brain is that it is both electrical and chemical and that internal chemical activity, much of which is controlled by genes, effects it as much as external input.

I tried that, and it didn't work. For some reason prozac works very well for me whereas tricyclics have no such effects.

Also,

More about the neurobiology of bipolar






High levels of dopamine have been linked to anxiety. So those genes might be transcription factors, or signal tranducers that activate transcription factors and boost dopamine synthesis and reuptake to unsually high levels.

I'm pretty sure that Rdos knows about low serotonin, there's no need to use a condescending tone as if he were an idiot. That doesn't mean that depression should always be considered as idiopathic, and once you've added extra serotonin, there, it's cured. Many times the chemical imbalance is only a consequence of a bad environment and the real cause wasn't found. There are cases of depression caused by low serotonin alone, yes, but based on the current data, it's assumed to be relatively rare in comparison with depression with primarily environmental causes.
And bipolar isn't the same thing as major depressive disorder or dysthymia. Disorders with psychotic episodes have much stronger biological causes than depression.

Not everyone with bipolar disorder experiences psychotic episodes (especially if they are properly medicated) and it is classified as a mood disorder along with anxiety disorders and clinical depression for a reason.

No they aren't they are states of neurology....neurodiverse people have different types of personalities, just like neurotypicals.

Most of you are talking mumbo jumbo theories, except MissAlgernon.

Possibly certain personality types are more common with NTs and others are more common with NDs.
Or that neurotypes modify how personality traits are expressed.

I am NOT arguing that depression is always ideopathic! However, chronic ideopathic depression is a very real illness and often does not respond to tricyclics or SSRIs(the latter which are usually more effective for major depression, but in some cases MAO inhibitors do the trick but those are dangerous). However, psychotic episodes(where they have actual delusions and hallucinations) are not part of the necessary diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder. You are thinking of schizoaffective(which is a form of bipolar with psychotic episodes similar to schizophrenia).

There are other mood disorders like hypomanic bipolar and cyclothymia where afflicted individuals have recurrent, ideopathic depression.

But while we at it, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD.

Of course. We also know that depression and suicide is much more common in autism (and neurodiversity as well), but that doesn't prove that depression and suicide is in our DNA. It only proves that being neurodiverse predisposes you to get depressed and suicidal.

Besides, at least being prone to commit suicide cannot be an adaptation, and thus cannot be in our DNA.



Of course it can. The traits that predispose to depression and anxiety are heritable, but in the absence of a bad environment, depression and anxiety won't develop.

For instance, if you are highly sensitive to sounds, then you will be bothered by fans and loud noises, and if those appear at random you might develop anxiety because you cannot predict when these overloads will appear. If you remove the noise, then anxiety won't develop.

For depression, the causes can often be being alone, having low status and no challenges. This promotes depression. OTOH, if you succeed, get a partner and a job, have many interesting things to do, you are unlikely to get depressed.

Autistics are more likely to be jobless/friendless/romanceless.... then of course they would be more likely to become depressed.

Of course. You don't need to be a scientist to understand that connection. Besides, researchers always need to control for "socio-economic" issues in their studies, but for some reason they seem to "forget" to do this when dealing with autism and "mood disorders".