Depression and suicide

They've found a genetic link between some anti-depressants and in increase in thoughts of suicide.

But what they didn't find was any link between thoughts of suicide and actual suicide.

That's the part I find interesting although it's not the part that gets written up.

It's my guess that people who report suicidal thoughts are those who don't want to commit suicide but are having thoughts and want help fighting those thoughts.

People who actually are thinking that them might want to commit suicide don't report the thoughts because they know they'll get locked up and lose the option.

I'm just guessing.

Albert Ellis died

Albert Ellis has died.

His work in the 1950's on what he called Rational Emotive Therapy eventually lead Beck to develop what he called Cognitive Therapy. Most of Ellis's emphasis was just in pointing out how intellectually empty Freud was, and he was eventually successful in bringing the mainstream psychiatric community around to rational thinking.

Beck's work in Cognitive Therapy, combined with Zoloft, probably saved my life. I'm not exaggerating.

I don't think Cognitive Therapy would have been conceived if Ellis hadn't lead the way.

Mental Illness and guns

If you've ever had a mental disorder that caused an irrational fear of spiders the Maryland State Police want to know about it so they can make sure you don't get access to a gun.

There's just too much risk if we let those kind of people have guns.

Past episodes of mental illness do not predict future violence. It just has no predictive value at all.

Past violent behavior does have some predictive value. But, it's not very strong. If the Maryland State Police actually thinks past violent behavior can predict future irrational violence then maybe they should be automatically disarming any cop who is invovled in an incidence of violence?

I think the head of the Maryland State Police is insane.

Depression and rational thought

I was watching the O'Reilly show with BillO commenting on the prosecutor who killed himself inside his house as police and Dateline surrounded his house after a failed sting attempt.

I say it was a failed sting attempt because the guy did not show up to meet what he thought was an underage girl. Dateline had hired Perverted Justice to entice the guy to meet a 13 year old, he agreed to meet her, but turned around and went home.

Police were watching and when they saw the enticement didn't work they took Dateline along to raid his home and arrest him anyway.

They didn't get a chance, the guy killed himself.

The guy's family is sueing. Good for them, I think.

BillO doesn't seem to agree.

It's a sure thing that a guy who commits suicide is not thinking rationally. Maybe BillO is right and the guy was guilty and the suicide was because of his shame from the guilt. Or maybe that guy thought he was part of an X-files episode and he was following the script, thinking the gun was simply a stage prop. But, whatever the guy was thinking, it was not a rational thought. That part is certain.

The idea that depression is about mood and feelings rather than a disorder of thought is what tends to lead idiots like BillO to try to analyze suicide as if the person who killed himself was being rational. That's just not the way depression and suicide works.

If you actually watch those Dateline shows and think that Dateline (or the Police) are actually giving you an honest protrayal of any of it, keep this in mind.

As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete.

Dateline should go back to blowing up pickup trucks.

Popular misconceptions about depression

Mangans has an old post on depression with some new comments. The post is about depression and IQ and the popular misconception that high IQ people tend to be have a higher tendency to depression then others while the science says the opposite -- that high IQ actually improves coping skills and helps mediate any occurrence of depression.

That's all true and it's a nice post.

But the comments expound on some nonsense about depression being caused by your daddy making you feel bad.

And it was clear to me and to the many psychologists and psychiatrists I saw over the next fifteen years that my depression problems were (and are) the result of the way my father treated me as I grew up, and how I tried to deal with this, given my high IQ and my "artistic imagination."

Depression is called a Mood Disorder because it's an extreme change in mood and irrational moods that are observed. But that's not what depression is about. It's not about feeling bad.

The fundementals of depression are based on irrational thought. It's a disorder of thought. Shrinks tend to not focus on that as much because it's more difficult for them to observe. People, even professionals, tend to shy away from things that are hard and tend to grab onto things that are easy. Mood is easy to deal with (at least easy to recognize). Thought is hard to deal with and hard to see.

But just becuase working with depression as a thought disorder is hard doesn't mean it's not what the reality of the disorder is all about.

The reason the commenter spent 15 years with analysts and was still depressed was that he dropped the keys in the dark alley but went under the light post to look for them.