Deans' stroke musings: This Positive View Of Depression Says It Is Sometimes A ‘Useful State’

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, September 9, 2024

This Positive View Of Depression Says It Is Sometimes A ‘Useful State’

Don't let your doctor use this as an excuse for your depression about not getting 100% recovered. Screaming may be required.

This Positive View Of Depression Says It Is Sometimes A ‘Useful State’

One way that depression could be ‘good’ for you comes from a radical positive view of depression.

People who are depressed find it easier to let go of goals that are hurting them, research finds.

Depression could be a useful mechanism to stop people doing things that are making them unhappy. For example, depression could stop people from:

working too hard,
taking on too many commitments outside work,
or aiming for an impossible goal.

Unobtainable goals could spark bouts of depression, which then encourage the person to give up.

This unusual view of depression as a ‘useful’ state comes from a paper published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

For the study, some people who were depressed and some who were not were asked to solve some anagrams.

The trick was that some of the anagrams could not be solved.

Ms Katharina Koppe, the study’s first author, explained:

“These unsolvable tasks represented unattainable goals, which it was necessary to give up as soon as possible in order to use the time effectively.”

The results showed that people who were depressed spent less time on the unsolvable anagrams than the control group.

However, depressed people spent the same amount of time on the anagrams that could be solved — showing they still pushed on with tasks that could be completed.

Professor Klaus Rothermund, who co-authored the study, said:

“The general lack of motivation that is typical of many patients with depression apparently gives rise to a greater ability to abandon goals, and one could use this in therapy.”

Giving up on an impossible task is clearly beneficial — as long as the unattainable goal is replaced with something meaningful that can be achieved.

Ms Koppe said:

“If we stop seeing depression simply as a psychological burden, which just needs to be removed through therapy, we might also be able to use the patient’s crisis as an opportunity for personal development.”