Comments on: One Step Forward? Or Five Steps Back?

By: sts

sts — Sat, 29 May 2010 10:58:02 +0000

You post awsome articles. Bookmarked !

By: Ronald Pies MD

Ronald Pies MD — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:50:58 +0000

Hello! I very much appreciate your citation of my articles on this controversial issue. You may also find my article on “The Anatomy of Sorrow” of interest:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2442112/

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll check out the Psychiatric Times website for an upcoming piece
by Prof. Jerry Coyne, the evolutionary biologist who has challenged the Thomson-Andrews thesis.

Best regards,
Ronald Pies MD

By: Remember Me When I Am Gone Away | EmsCharityKiss

Remember Me When I Am Gone Away | EmsCharityKiss — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:00:54 +0000

[...] of human nature, grief included. Sadness and depression doesn’t make art better (see the previous post regarding the NY Times ‘Depression’s Upside’ article) but it is often when things are bleakest that people find a voice strong enough to reach [...]

By: AGORAPHOBIA » Blog Archive » anxiety and depression correlation

AGORAPHOBIA » Blog Archive » anxiety and depression correlation — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:03:06 +0000

[...] One Step Forward? Or Five Steps Back? [...]

By: Vicki

Vicki — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:18:19 +0000

Great blog, Meg, and good response, Ashley.

The author of the article, Jonah Lehrer, talked himself around in a big circle. The middle part was the most useful – when he cited responses to the publication of Andrews and Thomson’s research (the so-called analytic-rumination hypothesis), most of which took the scientists to task because their study did not account for the many variants of depression. In his article Mr Lehrer included the following response to the criticism of the study by Andrews and Thomson:

“[They acknowledge that] depression is a vast continuum, a catch-all term for a spectrum of symptoms. While the analytic-rumination hypothesis might explain those patients reacting to an “acute stressor,” it can’t account for those whose suffering has no discernible cause or whose sadness refuses to lift for years at a time.”

Mr Lehrer appeared to have based most of his article on the Andrews/Thomson study, and wrote it as if the study was a comment on depression in all its forms, rather than the narrow focus it actually was. He seems to have succumbed to the trap most people fall into: that of thinking sadness and depression are interchangeable terms. His article does nothing to further understanding of clinical depression.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:14:10 +0000

That article (when I first read it) made me want to throw my computer. Though it still does. Okay, so some people might actually benefit. Though benefit is a bad word. The person suffering actually doesn’t benefit. The work they do causes other people to benefit. Reading the article, I had Poe on the brain. He strikes me as a person who would have suffered from some form of depression. His writing probably benefited from his suffering, but does that mean it was necessary? No. I don’t think so. I think he would have been happier without depression, even if that meant he wouldn’t have written the works he did.

You can’t just find a handful of people that did something great while depressed and suddenly decide that mental illness is beneficial to the person suffering through it.

For me its like saying this… Taking into consideration that some children with autism have above average skills in drawing, that they actually benefit from having autism. I’m sure if someone posted an article about that, they’d be called horrible for saying a such a thing.