A brilliant friend once described mental illnesses as evolutionary attempts at greater perception/processing — better creativity, pattern-recognition, risk management, etc. — and that has forever changed my perspective for the better.https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1073996821997879296 …
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Depressed people are not better at creativity, pattern-recognition, or anything. Depression is torture. Shows that evolution isn’t always for the better. But if some people enjoy mental illness then I guess that’s fine for them.
Mild-to-moderate depression *may* introduce new cognitive distortions while simultaneously reducing certain others —see "depressive realism." (But my claim here is not that mental illnesses are "good" or enjoyable. They're dysfunctional by definition.)