but you said diet, exercise, sleep, etc prevents someone from being depressed. It doesn't necessarily work like that.

Have you ever given a speech in front of hundreds of ppl? Given a pitch to a boardroom full of executive fat cats? That nervousness beforehand is called "anxiety"

In b4 "I'm just a tradie we don't give speeches"

You're trying to use yourself, presumably a combat veteran who saw some real chit and has PTSD as a result of it, as proof negative though. You are an extreme outlier on the spectrum of what people experience. I don't think that should discredit the entirety of what OP is saying.

It's the misc, not a peer-reviewed journal. If you don't speak with some generalization and brevity, no one is going to read your chit.

Everyone has their own reasoning for being depressed or anxious and thus their own path to fixing it. In general the above will help. But plenty of otherwise successful people also can have it, and their solution may not be through work or diet or whatever



But when half the country is either depressed or anxious then 90%+ of that can be fixed on their own accord without medication

I've come to believe that high population density, urbanization, 'the rat race', consumerism, media trends, and a lack of sacredness is likely a key contributing factor to mental health problems that society doesn't like to talk about, because it means questioning our economic system that incentivizes consumerism, urbanization, the rat race, media trends, and high population density.

I'm not trying to sneak in a political discussion, I genuinely think that the influence that our economic system has on mental health problems is overlooked. Now the mantra seems to be 'the problems are all in your head', only weak people question if the system is contributing to their life dissatisfaction.

I think Freud was on to something when he said that some mental health problems are caused by people trying to adjust their instincts to civilized society. I don't believe in his 'we are repressed savages' conclusion, but I do think that instincts towards communal living, having a sense of the sacred, and being close to nature are basically antithetical to the kind of society that our modern economic system creates.

I'm not depressed, and nor do I suffer from chronic anxiety anymore, but I know that my mood is always higher when I have a sense of community and spend time in nature.

As the spouse of a psychiatrist I can 100% tell you, you're a f*cking idiot.

i completely agree it can be fixed without meds. and honestly a lot of "depression" is relative. My depression is MUCH different from someone who's never experienced what I've dealt with.

so does diet, nutrition, etc help with a lot of it? yes. but some simply need professional help. I'llneveruse meds the VA pushes out, however I'll happily chat with a counselor and talk thing through.

Modern human life is completely separated to what humans have evolved with socially and psychologicaly for dozens of thousands of years. No wonder neurosis is rampant when we are living absurd lives completely detached from how we are. Meant to live.

Humans are all about social bonding and connection to our senses and bodies. Things that are completely missing in modern life. See how people live alienated from others isolated in fake virtual realities with their bodies and senses trashed from antinatural behavior, diets and lifestyles. No wonder everyone is crazy.

We humans evolved to live with tight social bonds, lots of play time With others and being in tune with our senses, think of summer camp, walking in the woods with fined tuned senses looking for food, fishing with the boos, chilling by the fire telling stories and banging all the sloots around without the social repressed stigma of sex.

I'm not pulling this out of my ass this is how Hunter gatherers lived and its pretty much regarded by anthropologists as peak humanity

How would you rather live op? Camping and fishing with the bois while banging every sloot in the tribe without jealousy or slouching in front of a pc drooling over virtual onlyfans sloots?

LMAO @ modernity

This is a good point. I'm back in a metropolis, after living close to three years in a smaller city surrounded by nature, and my mental health has been deteriorating since the past few months.

My exercise routine, diet, social circle, etc. are all pretty much the same, but I have been on edge, colder and am more prone to aggressive reactions nowadays.

This

See my post above. We could be all shrooming in the woods talking to deer spirits and fishing with the bois and banging sloots all night like rabbits, While being ripped and agile like an Olympic gimnast from a life of play and physical activity. But no,

"muh modernity"

Lmao

i believe this is most likely related to the gut and the vagus nerve. may relate to a crummy diet. studies re:vagus nerve stimulator for anxiety look promising.have you checked out emdr? recounting traumatic memories while sweeping eyes left and right? read that it sucks to do, but seems to really help with trauma. heard it has to do with the flight/fight/freeze response; the eye movement simulates flight/action.true for most everything in life. it's a diy project, though you might find some good advice or a helping hand sometimes.he actually had a brutal type of dementia. llewy body iirc. cbs did a story on it that you can find on youtube.

This. Chemical imbalances are very real. Bipolar/ADHD speaking here. I tried everything for years, worked out, ate healthy, got out of my way to be more social, etc. While it certainly helped, I still couldn't get quite there until I went on medication. Bipolar I especially is an entire other beast.

I agree meds are overprescribed, but as someone who's into medicine, SSRIs get blamed a lot but are far from the main culprit. That goes to especially benzodiazepines. Often Rx'ed at high doses every day, and are extremely addictive. A month of a dose equiv. to 20mg of diazepam (1mg of Klonopin or *****, 2mg Lorazepam) is enough to create physical dependece. And the withdrawals? Far worse than opioid withdrawals. Many docs are simply unaware of how dangerous these seemingly safe anxiety meds are.

Agree 100%

People living in cities were sold a fake set of goods, and depression/anxiety is reconciling with that. It’s so easy to throw away tradition like family and religion while also throwing out the centuries of values that came with it

The hedonistic lifestyle is promoted more in major cities, so it’s harder to course correct when everyone is cheering you on. But speaking from experience and knowing others - being involved in the rat race is only trying to fill up a hole that shouldn’t even be there to begin with

this

What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain

It doesn't need "chemical imbalance" to be real....

Yeah, you are definitely right about seasonal affective disorder. Also though, I travel to lot of warm places with strong sense of community(Latin America) and the average person living there is just a lot happier in general. Obviously depression will happen with certain medical conditions or chemical imbalances, but people I know who have bad anxiety are usually closed-minded people who are afraid to do certain things. Anxiety is mostly caused by a person's parents.

I dunno, these are certainly real conditions and medications do help. But I think the goal is to take the medicines to get you over the initial hump so you can eventually learn how to fix these conditions on your own.

I think anxiety has become a buzz word tossed around way too liberally and because of this, it undermines people who actually suffer from it.

Depression is real. I think you increase your odds of not having it or overcoming it without meds by living a healthier/active lifestyle, but that isn't a one off solution and it is ignorant to assume that just taking care of that end will pull people out of depression.

would be interesting if mynameisuntz came in here

don't remember what he was getting his phd in but i know his specialty was clinical anxiety

there is a theory that people with ADD are descendants of the hunter-gatherers and that this is the root of our being neuroatypical because we are less well suited to modern life.

so i thought it was interesting that my dna confirmed hunter-gatherer ancestry- U4b2. may have arisen in eastern europe, most common in northwestern siberian populations now, same group as the Magyars who invaded and ruled Hungary around the 10th century.