Something about depression

another discussion on /.

And this is an insightful comment written by a guy. I happen to agree.

Actually, a neat theory I heard about depression is that it comes into existence because the world doesn't suck. The basic idea is this. In nature a human be under constant life and death adversity. You would always be hungry and always searching for food. Depression in such in instance would offer up a defense against a lack of food. If you ran out of food, you would become depressed, expend less energy, and spend your time worrying how to obtain more food. Hopefully, you would find more food and resume a normal life.

Fast forward to today. You are a 16 year old girl in America. You are never going to starve. Survival will never be an issue for you. You have a mechanism that is designed to deal with life and death situations, but there are none. Instead, it goes crazy. It picks something that has absolutely nothing to do with survival, like boys, school, grades, popularity, or whatever. Worse still, none of these problems are easily satisfied. You can find plentiful food and be totally full, but how do satisfy more abstract worries like relationships and school? These are problems that can never be totally solved.

That is one BS theory I heard anyways. I have also heard something similar about allergies. People's immune systems are used to looking for environmental containments in nature, but when you live in a sterile environment it goes nuts and over reacts.

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