This is stuff we (I’m in my late 30s) didn’t have to deal with at all as teens — how to react when your mates committed suicide or started cutting themselves. I asked my 18 year old daughter “But why?” And she said “Depression.” (Her 18 year old boyfriend suffers from depression, as does his mother, so it’s something she is familiar with.) I said (about the other girl and her friends) “What – all of them?” And my daughter looked at me very seriously and said “Yes.”

Whether we understand it or not, kids today are living in a different world with different pressures to that in which we lived and I think as parents we will never really understand (because what teen is really open with their parent?) but it’s frightening. I think the more it’s brought into the open, definitely the better.

This week, I have some great posts for y’all, and I’ve added quite a few blogs about blogging to my Google Reader. It’s all a part of the week that was…Posts I liked – Club Troppo’s Jacques posts a ……

That’s another good story and it squares with my experiences also. Depression is a rotten disease, but thank goodness it’s treatable. You would be amazed who has, who has had it and who can get it.

He correctly identifies one of the really insidious things about depression: that it removes the will to be cured. I’ve been suicidally depressed, but it just crept up on me slowly. One by one the ways of getting out seemingly became impossible and suicide just seemed like the obvious way out.

That’s pretty scary if you think about it. I am lucky to be alive in some ways. If you feel depressed, SEEK TREATMENT. You are not alone. You don’t have to cry or hate yourself or hate everyone else or just lie in bed or consider what, if anything, to write in a suicide note. Get help. Please.

http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2006/09/depression_in_t.html

But given its increasing prevalence and the fact that it makes people really unfit in an evolutionary sense

Not necessarily. Selection pressure applies up to the point of reproduction only, after that it loses its punch. Depression comes and goes and so reproduction can take place anyhow, so the gene passes through.

Genes being the spaghetti code they are, it may also be linked to some positively-selected trait. Lots of smart people seem to get depressed, for example. The neurochemistry of intelligence may work at cross-purposes with that of emotional stability.

And so on. In evolution it is common to see genes which “should” be selected against surviving, simply because selection pressure is not strongly biased or because other benefits are conferred.

But given its increasing prevalence and the fact that it makes people really unfit in an evolutionary sense (and therefore is unlikely to be mainly genetic), I wonder about its genesis. Maybe there’s an unknown childhood infection that’s responsible (some scientists believe these cause many more problems in later life than they are given credit for – we didn’t see the effects as much in past centuries because they used to kill their hosts more often). Or maybe it’s something about our lifestyles. I dunno but it really is a puzzle – humans weren’t built to live or die this way.