Could depression serve a purpose we hadn’t thought of? Something simple, like thinking?
That’s the theory presented by Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. in a recent article in Scientific American.
The scientists point to a couple of points of evidence to support their theory. One, they say, ruminations help people figure out their complex problems, breaking them down into smaller, more digestible components. Such an exercise, they argue, makes a depressed person more able to solve the problems that made them depressed in the first place:
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.
The flip side of the coin not examined by the scientists, however, is obvious — ruminations can also be very nonproductive, too. It’s fine to describe how when one is an analytical frame of mind, one can tackle even highly complex problems. But math isn’t life, and a person who suffers from depression may often ruminate with no clear answers forthcoming. Rumination + lack of energy still = no behavior change.
But thinking about things from a different perspective is the basis of some modern psychotherapies, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). So perhaps there’s something to this line of thought. Indeed, the researchers then suggest that many of the so-called symptoms of depression might just be the body’s evolutionary way of dealing with this need to stay focused on analyzing and solving the problem that caused the depression in the first place:
Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain’s ability to process information.
All of which is very logical and makes sense, if ruminating alone usually helped most people resolve their serious depression on their own. But most people don’t. In fact, most people with depression simply suffer for years without treatment or help for it because they either feel it’s not “serious” enough to seek out help, or they’re afraid (or too ashamed) to get help for it. All those people, and all that time — you’d think we’d be seeing much higher cure rates simply by people thinking their way out of the problem.
Something unmentioned by the scientists also is worth noting — many people can’t trace their depression back to a specific concern, problem, or life event. For many people, depression doesn’t strike in some sort of logical fashion — it occurs out of the blue, for no reason at all. All the thinking or ruminating in the world isn’t going to help someone solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
For most people, ruminating about things doesn’t really seem to help their depression.
So while it’s an elegant theory on the face of it, I’m not sure how well it stands up against the reality of most people’s lives and the depression they face. If depression was simply nature’s way of saying, “Hey, wake up and start thinking about this problem,” I don’t understand why most people don’t cure themselves within a short amount of time. After all, if nature is giving us all of these symptoms to help us think, surely it has provided us with the natural innate reasoning and analytic skills to actually solve the problem, no?
Well, no. It hasn’t. And that’s the reason I don’t think this is a theory that makes much sense to anyone who’s ever actually dealt with depression for months or years on end.
Read the full article: Depression’s Evolutionary Roots
26 comments
I agree with you on this one. It’s really difficult to see how rumination can help someone crawl out of a deep depression. Somewhat related I read somewhere that three main factors seem to determine the consequences of repetitive thought (RT); the valence or emotional value of the thought content, the interpersonal and situational context in which you are in while having the RT, and the construal level or perception of the RT.
I think you’re missing the “bigger picture” by simply focusing on individual statements rather than all findings as a whole. I find the research to be not in-depth, but definitely a legitimate argument that requires further research and study. I have battled with depression for more than 10 years, with and without medication. Based on personal and professional experience, I find that several of my own observations fall in very similar lines with this new theory.
I absolutely cannot relate even one bit to any of what has been said, and it always amazes me, what actually gets published. (I am very glad the author of this article also doesn’t think a great invention has been made!)
First of all, I think that mild to moderate depression is ‘normal ‘ for some people. I have a sister like that and she has always been this way, although at some times it has been worse and I really encouraged her to get help, and which she did not. I have found mildly depressed people to have a better grip on ‘reality’, and also to be more intelligent. (And I feel, if this research gets published, I may just as well be allowed to state my humble opinion)
It’s just that in this country, we are made to believe that we are sick when not bursting with happiness, and I think that really sucks. Who ever made the law that people have to be happy at all times?
Then I really think that depression more than anything is a sickness of the soul. now, I have never had cognitive therapy for periods when I was depressed but I did have a psychologist aunt who felt the reason I was depressed was because I did not go swimming.
Yes, i do think exercise is great but i also must admit that i hardly ever move, or better, i have not moved in a few years, and I am not the least bit depressed.
I think the best cure for depression is to really have, or get serious problems, like perhaps have your house blow up on that one day and night where you happened to not be home. That happened to me, and when I ‘illegally’ walked through the ashes of the leftovers and saw the melted refrigerator, I burst out in tears because I knew I was the luckiest person in the entire world.
Anyway, does that make some sense?
I am quite comfortable with your assessment of the publication from the web page of SciAM Mind. And I say this as a long time sufferer of depression who has benefitted from psychopharmacology and little else although I do take sessions with a psychiatrist to discuss my situation and this is a good outlet for me.
I might project a bit farther than you did. The article is inherently optimistic. Nature doesn’t solve it’s own problems through evolution or otherwise. In fact some evolutionary change is inferior and leads to death through extinction. Am I hard put to imagine that an evolutionary change that stymies reproduction could be dominant.
Here’s what I perceive intimately about depression. While depression does slow us down it does not cause us to think deeply. My thoughts are muddled in depression not clarified. The really useful thing about being slowed down by depression is that depressed people are often on a destructive path. Whereby slowing depressed people down might help prevent some of them from injury or suicide if not by direct action then by inattention while driving or crossing the street. We poor depressed slobs don’t go out so we can’t get arrested for behaving strangely in public by the police. and so forth.
You mention cbt. I don’t see cbt as a cure for depression although it can manage destructive behaviors associated with depression to such a level that some one is less violent or might prevent them from taking their life in extreme cases.
I am sure you can make a good case for cbt that i won’t understand or appreciate. the insurance companies certainly believe you because they pay for cbt in day hospital. and you have a PhD so perhaps I should defer to your learning on this and suppose that my personal experiences cannot be generalized upon a larger population.
Let’s get back to the larger issue under examination. There are a lot more depressed people and scientist want to posit why that is. These scientists particularly think we are smarter and sicker. and maybe they think that our sickness somehow makes us smart. well maybe it’s the other way around actually. i think there are a lot of smart frustrated people because they don’t like what they see in the world and if they were less ware they would be more desensitized to this problem. so there could be a correlation but perhaps the scientists have causality reversed.
We have certainly heard about the famous psychologists of the mid twentieth century who proclaimed society itself was diseased. So many of us grew up under extraordinary environmental stress– the threat of nuclear war and industrial pollution. now the stressors are different. These are economic at least in the west.
There is a panglossian subtext that our suffering is for the best in the published scientific assertion under examination here. this invariably calls the religious and cultural education of the scientists into play. but i won’t go there because it would seem ad hominem and inflammatory. but i will say that such an assertion belongs in a self-help book and not a psychology paper.
As a life-long depression sufferer (well, at least since age 7), I think these guys are clueless about what’s really going on. Your conclusion seems accurate to me.
Rumination is very useful as long we know when to stop it.
Also.. a depressed individual has a lot of time for thinking but is this thinking constructive?
It is not constructive because the thoughts are generated out of a tormented anxiety and they simply go around and around. You are absolutely correct to point out. Plus, by definition, someone who is ruminating lacks the ability to stop the process. That is what rumination is. It is a very unhealthy and unproductive–rather a negative symptom–of depression. I thank God I have won the battle over depression because that is one part of it that I would not wish on anyone.
And cancer is nature’s way of saying, “Die”.
Since when does depression make you think? Have those two guys actually ever had depression?
Obviously not, Dee! So, I can’t say what their excuse is for their lack of clarity in thinking, but they are way the hell off! I have never heard of anything so stupid! They should go work with plant life–because they obviously are not competent to work with people! 🙂
@dee you have a good point in your cancer example.
but no one has to have depression to be a psychiatric researcher anymore than one has to be a serial killer in order to teach criminology.
wat would be useful here if these researchers had read some oral histories of depressed persons or taken a few because it is practical to define one’s understanding of a phenomenon before explaining it. in fairness we can stipulate how depression is defined in the DSM but i do not think these researchers understand the nature of depressed thought as you have clearly pointed out. so while these researchers might know what depression is, these don’t understand the thought processes which they are trying to explain in a practical way.
but these two are very smart people. i went to their respective websites and there’s a lot they can contribute to a dialog about depressive behavior. the problem with their analysis of depression is that it is seductive to depressed people. i posted about this article in the psych central forums some days ago and got many positive responses and thanks for doing so. i refrained from characterizing my own subjective feelings about the article in introducing it to other disabled people. and so many of them were gateful for an article about the mentally ill that made them feel special smart or a little better because it is the reverse of the usual.
we have no reason to argue that these learned gentlemen know little about depression. on the contrary, this optimistic make lemonade from lemons attitude is a bit desperado. it suggests an intellectual coping mechanism that rationalizes a problem to negate its impact. ironically this is contrary to the ‘analytical’ approach to breaking down problems advocated in the article because it is synthetic reasoning. i personally believe both methods yield valuable results.
I think the argument of the original article was that depression could be a logical response to being faced with a complex problem. We probably all know the difference between hunkering down for a few days to evaluate a relationship or job versus becoming mired in pointless ruminations about what we should have done differently in the past. I think lots of good CBT can help draw this distinction.
Endogenous depression that comes out of nowhere is a different story.
My husband requires meds for his severe depression. He was never taught he could do anything right or think his way out of anything, so it wouldn’t help him. HOWEVER, I tend to mild to moderate depression – especially seasonally – and meds don’t help – but thinking dpes. Analyzing and understanding are the key for me – and something he wants nothing to do with. So I think all of you who are making judgements because of your own experience aren’t seeing that it’s not the same for everyone. When I realize what is going on, I can relax. I understand that’s not possible for everyone – but you who need meds don’t speak for all of us!
@donna you make a very valid point. we as individual sufferers of depression cannot generalize our own situations into universal solutions.
there may be some forms of depression for which the researchers conclusions are correct even if my own afflictions don’t fall into this category. but i am not sure i generalized. i think maybe the researchers did the generalizing and that’s why the refutation seemed obvious to individual sufferers even if the obvious is not correct!
in your own case donna, you say that thinking can help you relax. i don’t want to nitpick but that is an anxiety issue. perhaps the anxiety is triggered by depression then i can understand your associations. but anxiety and depression are a little different. our point was that depressed people don’t think well because their thoughts are muddled. one doesn’t become depressed to improve one’s ability to ponder and one cannot think their way out of depression. you may disagree with this and i think you do. but anxiety is not depression so perhaps it can be dealt with rationally when depression cannot be treated through self awareness.
i think amanda’s point about the article that depression can be a logical response etc is interesting. i am not sure though that we are speaking in the same terms because depression is not merely a mood or logic modality. depression is very clearly defined in the dsm and it is a long-term problem not a mood. it is associated with weight changes, serotonin levels etc.
so i don’t think that a thoughtful depressive ‘funk’ is the same thing as depression. i also don’t think the idea of ennobling depression is a particular new or evolutionary idea since it can be traced back to the idea of ‘melancholia’ in medieval europe. individuals of a ‘saturnine disposition’ — dominated by the planet saturn in astrology were presumed to be disposed to melancholia while individuals dominated by the planet jupiter were jovial or happy. i will gladly stipulate that astrology is silly but i want you to know where these ideas come from without advocating them.
I agree with his statement, somewhat. Non-biological depression (depression caused by something outside of the dysfunction of “natural” processes) forces someone to really “think” of their current state.
Although it’s kinda hard to walk through life like this, without depression I would not be where I am today.
At one point, my depression was so terrible that I needed to make a decision about my life- work day and night to improve it, or die.
Depression encourages me to work my way out of my previous state, and to take risks that I thought was too risky before my change.
Now, I am an investor and a business owner. I wouldn’t be hungry enough to pursue these fields if I wasn’t somewhat depressed.
Of course, my case is very specific. I don’t see how depression, in general, has any benefits.
I often think my way out of depression. I know of several people who were implicitly taught to NOT think of solutions, but to wallow and they are all depressed most of the time. Could it be that chronic depression is the result of refusing (or not knowing how) to think of solutions? Indeed, several who have begun to think more clearly are slowing coming out of depression. You may have missed the point of the article.
True depression, as opposed to temporarily feeling sad or helpless, is not a social, cultural, or psychological phenomenon. It’s a biological imbalance. If pharmaceutical agents, or potentially safer treatments like magnesium, St John’s Wort, Rhodiola rosea, and vitamin D, can “cure” depression, there’s little evidence for this “not thinking” theory of depression. It’s true that psychological resolution of a pressing problem will make you feel better, but more often than not, people who are depressed are creating negativity and problems that would not exist in a healthy individual. There’s no way to think yourself out of it.
I agree with other statements that while a person may be able to “think” her way out of a mild depression, Major Depressive Disorder is definitely another story.
For me, it was impossible to think at all, except for those repetitive self-depreciating thoughts that repeatedly told me I was totally worthless, hopeless, and helpless. Only when an antidepressant actually started helping a bit could I actually start the process of thinking about anything it all. As I remember, the first weeks of therapy simply kept me going from week to week between therapy sessions.
I need to comment on something written in an earlier post:
“I think the best cure for depression is to really have, or get serious problems, like perhaps have your house blow up on that one day and night where you happened to not be home. That happened to me, and when I ‘illegally’ walked through the ashes of the leftovers and saw the melted refrigerator, I burst out in tears because I knew I was the luckiest person in the entire world.”
I don’t know about anyone else here, but when I was in my deepest and darkest depression, as stressors kept piling up, the deeper and darker my depression became.
Something as horrible as my house blowing up would probably have pushed me so deep I would not have been able to function at all. There is no way I could have thought I was the “luckiest” person in the world just to be alive. Still being alive could very well have been the last thing I wanted.
@bruce your argument that we missed the point of the article lacks causality.
your statement that
‘several who have begun to think more clearly are slowing coming out of depression.’
is not proof of concept. a more practical examination of your statement might be contextualized to understand that depression by definition impairs thought. people don’t come out of depression because they are thinking better or think their way out of it. Instead the improved thoughts of people coming out of depression is an indication of that improvement, not a cause of it. it is you my friend who has missed the point.
I’ve always thought depression was an evolutionary disadvantage.
Its commonly known that a number of depressed individuals choose to self-terminate. They could be trying to avoid passing along faulty depression-riddled DNA.
Low sex drive could be another way to prevent the depressed person from passing on the faulty DNA. Same could go for the desire to be alone.
The lack of or loss of interest in activities that used to be enjoyable, well that’s just icing on the black cupcakes of depression; further pushing the depressed individual down the path of isolation and possibly self-termination.
Having suffered from depression for the past 15 years, I feel I can safely say there is NO advantage to depression (evolutionary or otherwise)–at least not my personal flavor of depression.
I bet subsequent comments will back me up on this at least: modern science and medicine don’t know crap about depression.
I have suffered from depresssion from the age of 15. Through Psychotherapy I discovered I had been abused from an early age by my father. He continued to abuse me verbally through my teens esp. when I was dating. He even set up my brother to spy on me. I was date-raped when I was 21. (I was saving myself for marriage.) I then entered into something where I thought I belonged to this man. My sister had a plane ticket in my name and sent me to another country to join my parents. They were told lies by my sister and physically abused me, although by this time I was 21 Y. O.
I married a man I hardly knew. He was abusive in every way. I had 3 children with him. After 32 yrs. I phoned the police….after many yrs. of abuse. He left me, because of his pride and embarrasement. That was 10 years ago. We are now divorced. He is a multi-millionairre and I live under the poverty line. Life is definitely NOT fair. I dated for a while, then met “the man who would be my life-long love of my life”. We lived together for 5 yrs. I made a terrible mistake of having wine while taking meds.
It turned me into a “witch”. I told him to leave..which he did.
I experienced a horrible breakdown.
I am still suffering and have applied to a health centre.
I hope they can help me.
This article is absolute BS! As a person who has recovered from an incidence of Major Depression, I can tell you, without hesitation, that the rumination that characterizes the illness does absolutely NOTHING positive for a person with depression. It is, rather, a function of the physical anomalies going on in the brain that relate to anxiety levels as well as the rational insight of the person in that state knowing that, in their compromised state, they cannot function adequately to fulfill the typical expectations. So, their brain is sick and the parts that are overactive with anxiety due to the illness, are working in concert with their rational understanding that they cannot function properly, which increases anxiety levels even further, and this puts their brain into hyper-drive trying to think of how they are going to get things working right again–which is NOT possible as long as they are ill. Plus, because they are ill, they cannot really think about things in a 100% rational way. They are too overwhelmed. If thinking were the answer to their problems they wouldn’t be having depression. The problem is that the depression interferes with thinking as well as other things, like concentration, energy level, sleep, etc. This “theory” is just that a theory. It is a hair brained one at that. It is angering to someone like me who is intelligent and successful and knows how maddening and unproductive the rumination was during my illness. To be constructive, thinking needs to be clear. In depression, when it gets to the point of rumination, it is nothing but torment, with incomplete thoughts never going anywhere, just swirling around in a never ending eddy of anxiety. This psychologist is way too quick to theorize about the experiences of people he does not respect or understand. It is quackery. I’m disgusted by how far off base it is.
Perhaps you should actually read the entire article you’re commenting on. The article describes a recent research study, and I — the author of the article — conclude with,
So I think you meant to say, this “research” is BS — not the article commenting on it.
Depression definitely makes me better at math. I’m not very good at math, or anything that has to do with numbers, really. I’m even bad at remembering a phone number long enough to dial it. So naturally I work as an accountant, and hate it with a burning passion. I learned long ago that anything that makes me even marginally happy will negatively impact my work. I need to be depressed — usually in that place where you cry a lot in between long bouts of feeling numb — in order to do my job. It’s not worth it, of course, but I’m stuck with the job, and when I feel anything other than numb or sad, I make mistakes, and mistakes cost money. I’ve given up all hobbies, social activities, and friendships. I don’t date. And I limit my contact with my family to one weekend every other year. (I don’t get paid vacations anyway.) Still, sometimes I accidentally enjoy a television show or hear a song I like on the radio, and boom, instant huge math mistake complete with an IRS penalty large enough to eat a month’s worth of income. So whatever else is right or wrong about this theory, depression definitely improves math skills.