There’s an interesting new take on depression. It may not be a disorder at all, but an adaptation, an evolutionary trait that helps humans survive.
How could that be? What’s the point of it?
The answer is that depressed people dwell on their problems (yeah, you say, so what? We all know that). They analyze them and expend a lot of cognitive energy on them… depression is the act of going into a state of intensely seeking solutions to difficult problems.
Paul Anderson and J Andrew Thomson make the case in the Scientific American:
So what could be so useful about depression? 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.
Of course, being depressed is not fun at all, in fact it’s a horrible experience. But that’s the trade-off. Lots of things that keep you alive are not fun. Fever is another evolutionary adaptation to kill off infections, but it makes you feel terrible. The same with vomiting: it rids the body of toxins, but is not an enjoyable experience at all. And so it is with depression.
Something else that fits (and this is head-slappingly obvious in hindsight). People only get depressed when life sucks. So? Well, when your life sucks, you probably have difficult problems that need solving. Therefore, according to Anderson and Thomson, you need to be depressed. You need to mope around and dwell and obsess until you figure out how to stop your life from sucking.
Note that adaptations like fever, diarrhea, vomiting, shivering, and even fear of heights can call potentially back-fire and lead to harm. And so it is with depression: the outcome is not always good.
But it’s good to know that depression can have its upside. For someone who has experienced depression (such as me), it’s good to know that it’s at least serving a purpose. And that it may not be a “disorder” at all.