Yes, depression and anxiety are a reaction to an environment that one cannot adapt to (an unhealthy one), but you can't fix that at all with drugs. They are the fire alarm of the body. The only solution is to figure out what's missing in the environment (or move environments).
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Replying to @thewiseturtle
Sometimes depression is endogenous, i.e. not caused by the environment or the individual's trajectory though it. Also, almost all successful treatment of non-endogenous conditions will have to address self-modeling defects.
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Replying to @Plinz
According to the most current science there is always a physical reason for depression, as it's one of the possible responses to an environment that fails to meet the body's biological needs. Fight/flight/freeze/flow are the four basic types of response. Depression is freeze.
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Replying to @thewiseturtle
Of course there is always a physical reason if you don't live in a dualist universe. The question is whether the reason is in the brain's environment, or in the way the brain models its interaction with the environment, or in deficits of the brain's regulation capabilities.
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Replying to @Plinz @thewiseturtle
Even if the problems have environmental causes, being in a depressed state for long usually affects the regulation capabilities (for instance, certain neurons might atrophy and you have to supplement the neurotransmitters they normally produce for a while).
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Replying to @Plinz
My approach is to look for all the causes, starting with what we know about biological needs. If people want to numb their pain with drugs in the meantime, I won't stop them. But I won't give up either.
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Replying to @thewiseturtle
Sometimes it is impossible to think the necessary thoughts or performing the necessary actions without modulating your neurochemistry first.
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Replying to @Plinz
Nearly every human is deficient in the basic needs: high quality food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and outlets for expressing the body's excess matter and energy. I start looking there.
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Replying to @thewiseturtle
With the exception that most food people eat is not very good, I would have thought that the physiological needs are solved in the first world, and the main problems are about safety and social needs?
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Replying to @Plinz
Nearly all humans in the "modern" world are deficient in many nutrients the brain needs. Water and air quality is bad too. And shelter is almost always a stress (landlords and mortgages). And yes, freedom of expression ("safety") is woefully repressed too.
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People in the premodern world mostly had it worse, though.
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