Posted by baseball55 on January 14, 2016, at 21:00:33
In reply to Why does mental illness occur?, posted by john locke on January 13, 2016, at 22:02:46
> I know that it's usually a combo of genetics and environment. I am wondering in the broadest sense possible. As far as humans go, I feel like environment plays a much larger role in most cases because biologically we are so far off from how we are supposed to live. (i.e. being cavemen essentially). Do you think cavemen ever got depressed?
Why are we "supposed to live" as cavemen? That was a phase in human evolution, one that passed. We live as we have evolved to live. We don't know much about cavemen, because at that stage humans had not evolved writing. Maybe they got depressed, committed suicide, had hallucinations. We don't know.
Personally, I get very annoyed with this new "paleo-diet" stuff. That eating as cavemen ate, with no grains or legumes, is natural for human beings, while the diet that has evolved with the advent of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago is not "natural."
The human race evolves. What we are now is what is natural from an evolutionary perspective. And today, I would say that mental illness is, as many psychiatrists put it, a bio-psycho-socio phenomenon - a complex interaction of biological tendencies, psychological history and behaviors and social background and environment. So, for example, a person with a biological tendency toward psychosis may behave and experience this differently if they also suffered psychological trauma and live in a chaotic environment than someone from/in a safe and loving environment.
But even this is only a "may." There are plenty of people from safe, loving environments who become delusional and unstable and lose everything.
For me, I suffer from depression and when I have become depressed in recent years, there is rarely any psycho or socio precipitant. I think it's mostly bio. But, when I become depressed, the thoughts and feelings depression engenders have roots in my upbringing and current social state. Many people, for example, are depressed but not suicidal. For me depression and suicidality are inseparable, probably because my grip on life is weak due to a traumatic upbringing.
poster:baseball55
thread:1085369
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20151225/msgs/1085405.html