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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was dx'd with clinical depression at 12---it was v clearly a chemical imbalance, no environmental factors. It took five meds to find the right one, and several bad therapists before we found one that works.  It's always going to be there, I'll probably always be on meds, but it's manageable.[/quote]
I don't think you understand "enviornmental" factors. Everyone has them. It's a long process to learn which ones weren't positive.[/quote]

I had a happy childhood and a very supportive family, no history of abuse or PTSD or anything. But thanks for telling me about my own mental health, I totally appreciate the insight from a random anonymous stranger on the internet. [/quote]
Good thing you isolated your bad luck gene.
Incredible that the family you inherited the illness from, was perfect in every way.
Truly amazing!
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I'm not saying they were perfect, but that my issue was obviously a genetic mutation and not situational.  Blaming families for medical conditions doesn't help the stigma that surrounds mental illness.[/quote]
It's so unfortunate that you feel this is about "blaming". It's about learning the truth. There is no perfect parenting. Not your parents. Not my parents. And certainly not me.

Let's just be honest. We all could have been better.
If only we knew.

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Um, the truth about depression is that it can be caused by a chemical imbalance you nutjob.[/quote]

PP needs to know more about depression. It causes cognitive distortion, so you can start with a physical illness (depression triggered by hormonal changes, for example), but then to attach the physical illness to causes that are unrelated (marital problems, financial problems, hangnails, etc.) and decide the illness is caused by these ordinary things. Every human being has problems of one sort or another, some large, some small, most in the middle, but there's no avoiding them, and most problems do not cause depression. (Some people go through horrific experiences and end up without depression or mental illness.) The cause and effect of depression is not clear because as I mentioned, depression causes cognitive distortion, ie your thinking and rational understanding of your experiences becomes distorted by your depression, and you begin to blame what is a chemical issue in your brain on external issues (like your husband or your job or your kids), which all of us have to one degree or another.

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Excellent explanation.[/quote]

It is well articulated but not necessarily accurate. There is really no one in the medical community who would call depression a chemical imbalance. That is a term that was developed years ago partly to move the perception of depression away from personal weakness/character and partly by the the pharmaceutical companies who wanted to tell you they could re-balance your chemicals. It isn't accurate and is a frustration for people who do research on mental illness as it is a pervasive view in the general public. Depression is neurobiological however that doesn't mean that no other factors other than neurotransmitter re-uptake are at play. While the etiology is still in its infancy in being understood, we do know that there is no one 'cause'. Just like there isn't one cause for all heart disease or one cause for all cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that everyone with depression was born with a chemical imbalance. The serotonin theory is only one of many, many theories in understanding depression. The fact that SSRIs work to alleviate symptoms of depression tells us nothing about the cause of the illness. The drugs just treat symptoms. Just like ibuprofen alleviates the symptoms of pain, however if you have pain alleviated by ibuprofen that doesn't mean the cause of your pain was a ibuprofen deficit. Until now our understanding of mental illness has been symptoms driven (see DSM), that approach has just about run its course and taken us as far as it can. The NIMH is now moving away from that and in the next few years we will hopefully start to have a much better picture of mental illness. Also environmental factors and situational factors are two entirely different sets of factors, and both absolutely play a role in illness, including mental illness. Posters saying those play a role are not wrong in any way.  Those factors have both a physiological and psychological impact. Environmental and psychosocial factors being at play does not mean that someone just couldn't cope with their environment/situation.

It is good that depression isn't a chemical imbalance. SSRIs are only effective in alleviating symptoms for 50-60% of people, naturalistic recovery is about 50% (people who get better in a year with no treatment), and initial placebo effect is about 40%.

Here is a position statement from the Director of the NIMH on moving away from the DSM and symptom driven diagnoses. [url]http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml[/url]
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