[flippinburgers]

I have had what seems to me to be depression for most of my life (40+ years). I have been fortunate enough to have a kid and, now, I guess I just don't have time to be depressed or something because most of my thoughts of ending life etc have, quite thankfully, gone away. I'm really not trying to be off-putting when I say this but I do sometimes wonder if some instances of depression aren't simply a cause of people not having families. I'm not totally confident about this, but ... really I think having kids gets looked down on for all the wrong reasons and maybe our deepest drives are all tied to having them.

[h0l0cube]

> I do sometimes wonder if some instances of depression aren't simply a cause of people not having families

As a child raised by a depressed and emotionally unstable parent, I have to disagree. Being well-adjusted is a good predictor for being a good parent. Even if in some cases people with mental health issues have a positive transformative experience, it's at best a dice role to treat it as therapy, and early childhood trauma is the collateral.

[nonethewiser]

> I do sometimes wonder if some instances of depression aren't simply a cause of people not having families

Keyword here is “some.” One instance that does not fall in this category doesnt suggest there arent some cases that do fall in this category.

[h0l0cube]

I saw the keyword, and as I qualified in the full comment, it’s a risk and one that shouldn’t be borne by the children

[yndoendo]

Replace "some" with "lucky". Is that not what STEAM often tries to do, increase the probability of a positive outcome over a negative. Improve luck.

A person does not fight cancer. A person is lucky if the cancer treatments are effective and they survive. Modern day cancer treatments increase the luck of survival.

Some depression is self induced. Always and continually focusing on the negative of thee past. Seems like top post might of had this type. Time need to support the child replaced the time to keep playing back those scenarios in their head with the continue down the road of depression. Tied with changes to their environment.

[antod]

A counterpoint: Speaking for myself who had also been mildly depressed since teenage years, it didn't kick off into actual breakdowns and medication until after having kids. Previously it was probably so mild it wouldn't have counted as depression.

All behind me now that they've mostly grown up.

[malauxyeux]

Maybe not even having kids, but being engaged in something fully.

From neuroscience, there's the default mode network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

> It is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering.

Apparently, activation of the DMN is correlated to rumination, itself correlated to depression.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31655111/

Interestingly, one thing often suggested to counter depression these days – meditation – generally says right on the tin that you're supposed to get into a wakeful rest state, but specifically try to avoid daydreaming and mind-wandering.

(I should say that I'm no expert. Just passing along things that I've heard/read.)

Edit: formatting

[ninala]

Broadly speaking, engaging in a task activates the task-positive network, which actively suppresses the default mode network [1][2][3]. This likely happens during meditation [4], as during properly done meditation, one is supposed to be focused on the task of breathing. But this can be interrupted, particularly by stray thoughts/salience/attention shifts [5].

[1] "The human brain is intrinsically organized into dynamic, anticorrelated functional networks", https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0504136102

[2] "The Brain's Default Mode Network", https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-neuro-0710... {search for 'task-positive'}

[3] "Neural antagonistic mechanism between default-mode and task-positive networks", https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092523122...

[4] "Mantra Meditation Suppression of Default Mode Beyond an Active Task: a Pilot Study", https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41465-017-0028-1

[5] "Modulatory interactions between the default mode network and task positive networks in resting-state", https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017816/

[amelius]

There are many examples of people who are obsessed by work, and at the same time depressed. While the distraction can temporarily take away the depressive thoughts, it is by no means a solution. I think the social aspects of raising a kid could be a better explanation.

[blauditore]

Might also be the additional social interaction (the kid is a human, even if a small one). I think many people felt this during the pandemic and its lockdowns.

[famahar]

I know some people that got dogs (and kept them thankfully). Having someone in your life who's consistently happy to be in your presence is a pretty good antidepressant.

[ramblerman]

I guess there was something in the old proverb.

“Idle hands are the devils workshop”.

[makeitdouble]

I feel we have "depression" the same way we get "colds", try to rest hoping it goes away. Most of the time it does, and sometimes it's something else completely, but in contrast to colds, we have no good tool to properly diagnose the exact illnesses, and are probably lumping together myriads of different things under the "depression" umbrella.

That also matches how treatment for depression often involves throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what method and treatment sticks. Even medication usually goes through trying different chemistries a month or two at a time and see what has any effect.

I've had friends who went out of depression by quitting their soul crushing jobs to start solo businesses. I expected they would slack a bit more and be more relaxed as self employed, but from the sidelines they looked way more busy, working way harder and longer than before. Except it seemed to work for them and they're still doing i years later.

Your story kind of resonates the same to me, and I assume the family building part can be proxied by different goals, stuff that actually matter and bring sense to what someone is doing in life and/pr a different human environment. It might not work for everyone, but I agree there must be a sizeable portion of "depressed" people who's cure are not more medication or less work, but radical changes in other aspects of their life.

[m463]

> I feel we have "depression" the same way we get "colds", try to rest hoping it goes away.

There's lots of evidence that doing the opposite of rest - aerobically exercising - helps tremendously with depression (and lots of other issues).

[makeitdouble]

I meant "rest" in respect to work. In many countries a letter from a doctor certifying a depression diagnostic means a month to several months of mandatory leave.

It usually comes with medical followup and regular checkups, and the general advice I heard was to take peaceful walks, or simply going outside, and cut ties from the environment where the issue rose from for a while.

[TeMPOraL]

> but in contrast to colds, we have no good tool to properly diagnose the exact illnesses

Isn't this the case with "colds" too? At least in practice.

Maybe it's my bad luck, or location-specific (Poland, EU) - but ever since I became a parent (and saw myself visiting doctors 10x as often as before), I've started to notice that, unless it's one of few very specific diseases, you just can't seem to get any diagnosis for a "cold" from a doctor. They'll prescribe you/your kid some meds or treatments, but nowhere in the conversation they say "you have ${specific illness}". No such information seems to show in medical documents either. If I ask, they always manage to deflect the question without even acknowledging it (I haven't tried to insist yet, I don't want to be rude to someone who's nice and helping me).

Is this because they genuinely don't know anything beyond "one of many pathogens that cause this group of symptoms", but it doesn't matter because they all respond to the same treatment options (or don't respond to anything, and you're just treating symptoms)? Or is there a practice of not giving such information to patients?

[naasking]

> now, I guess I just don't have time to be depressed or something because most of my thoughts of ending life etc have, quite thankfully, gone away

Negative thought loops, aka rumination, are strongly implicated in many kinds of depression. If you no longer have time to indulge in ruminating, that's one way to break such loops.

[bendbro]

I agree, I wonder if depression is not always rooted in some random, mental problem but rather a reasonable reaction to reality.

[Rury]

I'd wager that depression is merely a symptom of learned helplessness, a natural response to being repeatedly powerless in circumstances one is vested in the outcome of. A result of being repeatedly and extremely frustrated, and/or being in circumstances of great cognitive dissonance despite ones attempts to resolve it.

It seems to me the best way to fight depression, is to contimually distract yourself (particularly with an activity you can control), from whatever is depressing you. As if, by being busy, so much, that you end up forgetting about those depressing things. I know it's easier said than done, but to me, it seems to work if you're able, whereas focusing or dwelling on the depressing things, seems to further depression.

[ryanklee]

People who suffer from chronic depression do so without regard to circumstance. It's a mental plague that follows one wherever they go, whatever they do. It has nothing do with reactions to anything. There's nothing reasonable about it.

[munificent]

Some people who suffer from chronic depression do so independent of their life circumstances.

But other people who suffer from serious depression do so in ways that can be connected to their life circumstances and the framework of meaning they build for themselves around it.

I think one of the biggest disservices we do to people suffering from depression is lumping those two categories together.

It's like we have a single diagnosis for "bleeding" and very rarely distinguish stab wounds from hemophilia.

[dgfitz]

I disagree. Mine set in after my first child.

[ryanklee]

I did not say that there is no such thing as situational depression.

[cpncrunch]

It's a bit unclear from your comment whether you're saying situational depression is different from chronic depression. Having seen chronic depression, I would say that in at least some people it is triggered by stressors. Obviously when it is chronic there are other factors at play such as genetics, childhood experiences, etc. which make depression more likely to happen at any point in time.

[xwdv]

I read a book called “Lost Connections” which pretty much solidified my belief that most depressions are actually a reaction to something that a person doesn’t feel right about in their life, and is not making any effort to change, because they might not even be aware.

[naasking]

> but rather a reasonable reaction to reality

The theory you're describing is "depressive realism". It's hotly contested. In some ways, depressed people can make more accurate assessments, as most people have an optimism bias, but their assessments get unrealistically over-pessimistic as time passes.

[intelVISA]

Do you blame the bug or the debugger then?

Given the general tech-dystopian living conditions and % distribution of non-free software throughout the population: depression would be near universal if this was truly the case.

[pessimizer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

[EGreg]

I kept saying this for years on HN but until the 2022 study it was always voted down and told that NO, it is due to a chemical imbalance and that we don’t understand

[whats_a_quasar]

The thing that's dangerous about this line of thinking is that most depressed people feel like they have insight and are reacting to reality as it really is. But if the depression lifts, they usually no longer feel that way.

So trying to figure out whether depression is reasonable is usually a trap, and will not improve the person's life. The thing to do is to manage the feelings, treat the depression, and revisit those topics once the depression lifts.

[bendbro]

I recall that study!

I suspect those downvotes are due to people recognizing that it implies depression is sometimes within the control of someone afflicted by it and conflating that with blaming the person afflicted by it. People seem offended by critiques of modern ideas that rationalize away an individual's control, agency, and especially culpability for their behavior or outcomes. Sometimes these rationalizations are fair, other times not.

[pessimizer]

I think that it's simpler: people have long been encouraged to believe that certain medical procedures and practices that lack great evidence are responsible for saving their lives, and that anyone who critiques those procedures in any way is trying to kill them. People who are paid (as often as not by government) to provide those procedures and practices encourage these beliefs, and spend massive amounts of money in lobbying through patients' rights groups and other channels to support and encourage people in that fear and anger.

People who are sick either continue to be sick, get well, or die. No matter what diagnosis or treatment you give to someone, they either get better, don't get better, or are removed from the conversation. We never hear from the dead again, the people who get better insist that you saved their lives, and the people who don't get better will be attacked by the people who did for not believing or trusting you enough.

[ryanklee]

That study does not support your intuitions on this matter, but merely excludes seratonin as the basis for a chemical imbalance causing depression. It does not show that there exists no material cause for depression, only that there is strong reason to believe it is not related to seratonin.

[drowsspa]

First of all, that study is about challenging a specific chemical imbalance, which was not that well supported anyway.

But I think mental illnesses challenge our very old notions of free will, willpower and control. How much are you really in control when the mental structure for motivation in the brain is broken? Personally, it's not like I pulled myself out of depression. I just took advantage of a "break" my brain gave me.

[notnaut]

There is the chemical imbalance and then there is the diagnosis. Complete guess, but wouldn’t be surprised if the rate of people with the imbalance has climbed less dramatically over the last several years than the rate of people being positively diagnosed.

[ryanklee]

This is a misreading of the study which was about seratonin. It does not conclude that therefore there is no material condition underlying depression and that it's environmental and somehow the result of circumstance.

[mensetmanusman]

Well recently the chemical imbalance thing was debunked - no measurable imbalance. Maybe they will make progress now!

[ShamelessC]

> really I think having kids gets looked down on

It does? As someone who has decided not to have children, I feel very much like I’m the outcast. Particularly in the southern US. Also, here on HN where there are a shocking number of parents compared to say, Reddit.

[vermilingua]

That’s because the people here on HN have jobs /s

[astura]

Of course it doesn't get looked down upon, that's absurd. The most socially unacceptable thing for a woman to do is not have kids.

Something like 85% of people over 40 have children - it's literally what the vast majority of people do.

[AnimalMuppet]

Not sure about that. It gets looked down on in some subgroups. I've seen it here: "You shouldn't have kids because global warming". The more you are exposed to those subgroups, the more you perceive that it's looked down on, because the more you hear it being looked down on.

[astura]

Only in the fringiest of the fringe sub-subgroups.

[alexchantavy]

I think for myself it comes down to feeling like you have purpose so that you can wholly commit to something where you’re so busy that you don’t have time to get yourself depressed.

[theGnuMe]

It's good that you find joy in having children but others do not and find it stressful. Some folks might find joy in having pets but others do not.

That being said human connection and even animal connection are key ways to help improve and remove depression.