It has something to do with genetics - certain people are pre-disposed to suffering from depression whilst others are not. Like you said, Legend, some people would be able to move on with their lives whereas others would not. My dad, for instance, displays classic symptoms of cyclothymia (although he'd never admit it) so I can have a pretty safe guess where I've got it from.

If you look at it from a physiological perspective, the genetics argument would appear to make sense. DNA/mRNA is directly responsible for producing proteins that either create serotonin or are responsible for its detection and uptake - having a faulty gene for one of the serotonin receptors would result in a faulty receptor and thus decreased sensitivity to serotonin. Having a faulty gene for the production of whatever enzyme it is that makes serotonin from serotonin-phosphate (5-HT from 5-HTP) would certainly have an effect. Since DNA is inherited from parents, this argument would appear to be valid, and it is backed up by good evidence.

There are other factors though - stress has been correctly pointed out as one. Stress is a vicious circle - depression leads to stress leads to depression. Chicken and egg. I'd have to root around some papers to see the proposed mechanism, but we touched on in it in a couple of lectures.

This is precisely the problem facing the medical sector at the moment. The number of people complaining of depressive illness in the last 10 years has gone up something like 300%. They can't all have depression, but so far there is no definitive way to tell if someone has a neurological disorder. Even if you did a spinal tap and showed someone's central serotonin levels were a little low is inconclusive evidence - serotonin levels naturally fluctuate to some extent, and an abnormally low reading could be anomalous.

A good way to tell if someone really is suffering from the condition is something called a Beck Depression Inventory. Google it. People who are fine score under 10. People who are just a bit sad tend to score 10-20. Those with a serious illness rarely score below 30 and those above 40 are a suicide risk. At my worst I scored a 38 and at my best a 0. My dissertation was, in a very contrived way, looking at ways of actually clinically diagnosing depression. We had a look at how taste changes when serotonin is manipulated, but this stuff is in its very early stages. Even if it eventually works (which I'm skeptical about) it'll be decades before there's a conclusive test for depression.

Having suffered from depression on-off through the last couple of years I can also confirm this is a problem for many, since several of my friends have suffered depression too. There is a lot of hullaballo, since, yes, doctors are very quick to brand a case as depression and stick you on a years prescritption to citalopram or whatever. In my own experience, it seems like a warp in perception that comes from an underlying low mood, which therein influences your thinking. Like that shit feeling after a really hard night out, or the comedown, for those who use any kind of drug. One day I would think XYZ about a situation or life as a whole, and it would make me sink further and further down inside until I was feeling almost broken. Then my mood would change, and I'd be like 'why the fuck was THAT bothering me'? It really is the biggest anti-inner game condition you can find, and it's important to deal with it and understand it however you can.

Some of the things that I have found worked for me, have been reading philosophies, which can indeed make me feel better when the source is some kinf of 'spiritual' problem or whatever. But I have found myself naturally slumping back down for little to no reason. Citalopram certainly works and I believe it has been well verified to be more than a placebo. The same they say, with St. Johns Wort. My only problem is it comes and goes, so it's hard to be sure what's fixing it.

I would argue, from personal experience, that it's very important to keep a pleasant environment around you, and often, like a lot of PUAs say about girls, I find it's better to change my feelings, now my mind, which comes through doing things I enjoy as well as forcing myself to do the things I want to do that scare me. That's the basis behind CBT. I've recently tried a bit of meditation, which has variable effects for me, but it's been very much verified scientifically. A large amount of it is a kind of self acceptance too, like when you acknowledge you aren't feeling that great, and you accept it and work with it, but not submit to it, you lose a lot of the 'negative' tension it creates.

For the first time in my life, I'm currently going through a bout of depression.

Similar to what Blanca said, my misses has bi-polar tendencies (she was diagnosed with it a number of years ago), and from speaking with her it seems like I might be a bit like that myself. I constantly swing between manic highs and crushing lows. Currently, getting the energy to get out of bed in the morning is nearly impossible, and if it wasn't for the fact that I gig most evenings, I probably wouldn't get out of it at all.

I've lost interest in most of my hobbies (you may notice I've become a lot less active on here as of late), can't be arsed to go to the gym, lost my appetite, have erratic sleeping patterns, I find making simple decisions a chore and a consistent feeling of glumness / doom-and-gloom.

That's during the day at least. When the evening comes, I seem to explode into this crazed fun-fiend with a "fuck everything" attitude. I know the alcohol is helping either, but it at least makes the nights more barable.

I think for some people, the depression is routed in a cause. Fortunately I know what mine is. I left my last job a few months ago, and in the past never had an issue walking into another one as I have a pretty impressive CV, but it's been like 3/4 months now, and still nothing. Money is as good as dried out and it's getting me down. I know that as / when I get something I'll perk up (at least I hope so), but ironically this state of depression is making me less and less enthusiastic about getting up and finding something. It's an exacerbating spiral and I can completely understand how it completely ruins some peoples lives.

Like I said, I've had a lot of advice from some people who have been through what I'm going through (mainly, don't fight it, let it do it's thing, ride it, then work with it to get past it), and I'm sure I'll bounce back soon enough. It's SO unlike me though to be like this... I want my energy back!

I scored 25?

You can't just look at a single neurotransmitter as an indication of a persons state of mind, I read a interesting book recently called the edge effect, it talked a lot about the balance between dopamine, acetlycholine, gaba as well as seratonin.

Interesting since I scored high on having a dopamine and acetlycholine abundance more so than seratonin and ive never felt better in my life.

Well at this point we're getting away from my area of knowledge (the neurophysiological causes of depressive illness) and into clinical psychology and diagnosis. Therefore I can only make an educated speculation but I'll give it a go.

I believe part of the problem lies in thinking of depression as something you either have or haven't got. I believe it is more of a spectrum disorder like Autism. Let me explain.

Broadly speaking, a depressed state is caused by a decrease in the action of serotonin in the central nervous system for whatever reason. In other words, just feeling a little bit sad can be attributed to this - in other words if you're feeling a bit down in the dumps one day, you can be described as being depressed. Your mood and mental functions are depressed due to (among other things) a decrease in the action of serotonin.

Now imagine the more extreme version. You're really really sad, struggling to think of anything positive etc. I believe that this can be put on the same scale as the "feeling a bit sad" state - this is sadness turned up to 11, and is caused by a major lack of serotonin and/or its actions. I mentioned MDMA before, and it can serve as an example here. During a comedown, when central serotonin is depleted, you feel like shit. Not quite as bad as during major depression, but along similar lines. On the other hand, during the come-up, when you're full of it, you feel amazing. Manic.

What I'm trying to say (in an admittedly roundabout way) is that I think of mood as a scale from, say, -10 to 10. 10 being bouncing off the walls manic and -10 being suicidal. Everybody has the capability to feel 10 or -10 and everything in-between (because in theory everyone can have loads of serotonin or none), but some are pre-disposed to it, and some are more at risk of it from risk factors like stress, but most people range from, say, -5 to 5 during their life. People who "suffer from depression" in a clinical sense just feel abnormally depressed more of the time and more easily.

Anywho, on to your question which was how to test effectively for depression (if we take depression to mean feeling sad an abnormally large amount). Firstly, the benefit of such a test would have to be to recognise those feeling sad enough for it to impact significantly on their lives. Thus, I believe the Beck Inventory is sufficient - anyone who is depressed enough to have it actually affect their life will score highly, anyone who's a bit sad will score low.

Another thing to do (although it would be impractical) is to do a spinal tap and measure the amount of serotonin in the Cerebro Spinal Fluid (the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord). This would give a good indication of whether a person's serotonin levels were too low compared to a statistically determined mean. However, limiting serotonin's actions (and thus causing depression) can be done in other ways that this investigation would not allow for. For instance, overactive reuptake channels that take serotonin back into nerve cells, overactive action from enzymes that break serotonin down, lack of serotonin receptors on the synapse.

My point is, you can measure serotonin levels and enzyme activity until you're blue in the face, but the best way to tell if someone has a problem with depression is to do a behavioural test because depression, if it is bad enough, is a behavioural illness.

Thanks for the post. I've been battling depression most of my life. I quit my job late last year as I wanted to put all my efforts into dealing with the situation once and for all. Depression has left me socially isolated to a great extent which makes it really hard for me to connect with just about anybody, let alone women. Example: in three years of drinking at my local I still don't really know anybody all that well; in 3 months my brother was on first name terms with just about everybody there and banged the landlady. (Then he stopped going because she turned out to be one of those emotionally unstable freakazoids.)

In recent years things have slowly started to turn around. I have some good, close friends now, although I can't see them very regularly which means I tend to go out by myself more often than not. One of the reasons I joined this forum was to try an establish a social network where I could actually go out regular, approach women but also talk about pick up and what it means to people and what works/doesn't work etc.

I was on citalopram for about 4 months but I junked it as I felt it wasn't helping me. If only the powers that be threw as much resources into mental health as physical the world would be a happier place. My doctor has been falling over himself to check a blip in my bloodwork that he says is almost certainly nothing, yet I am now into week 16 of waiting to get involved in my second round of CBT (the first being finished up when the money ran out, just when I was starting to make real progress).

Maybe I could try harder but nobody could accuse me of not trying at all. It's always difficult to stick something out when positive results are slow to come by.

But depression cant just exist without reason can it,

my depression was due to my lack of social life/ bullying in the past
it still exists but i know once i have a social life it will go away

other possibilites could include, bereavement, broken relationships, financial wories etc but ive never heard of depression without reeason

even tyler durden said that getting guys laid would cure alot of that mental shit, i believe him because afterall happiness does just boil down to spreading your genes, your friends, family, career is there to do so. I guess not by personal choice but by natural choice

There is a reason for everything.

Wether its an event in somones life that the subconscious interprets by adjusting your serotoni levels - for example
or wether its your genetic makeup
or wether its some internal damage

you get my point