Depression may play a positive role in our lives

Justin Thomas looks at depression, including suggestions that it is a natural response to problems in our life to help us focus on fixing them

In our rush to medicate and chase away even the mildest states of depression, we may actually be doing ourselves a disservice.

In several nations, the leading cause of lost work days is now depression. It used to be backache (musculoskeletal disorders). In the United Kingdom, for example, the Health and Safety Executive put the 2016 figures at 12 million lost work days for depression and 9 million for second placed musculoskeletal disorders. As mental effort replaces manual labour in the workplace, psychological complaints displace physical ones as the main cause of absence.

Conventional wisdom suggests that lifting heavy loads can result in a back injury, but what causes depression? This is a particularly complex question because depression appears to have many possible causes, with no absolute consensus about any of them. One factor, however, that does command fairly broad agreement is that depression is often preceded by “real-world” problems.

The types of problems that herald depression often involve complex social dilemmas. Examples include anything from getting a new boss (who is worse than the last one) to discovering a marital infidelity (again). Such events give rise to complex questions such as: “What should I do?”, “What did I do wrong?” and “Why is this happening to me?” But why should these types of situations negatively effect our mood, motivation, sociability and energy levels – all symptoms of depression?

One relatively new, and fairly controversial, theory suggests that we get depressed because depression is actually helpful on some level. In other words, depression evolved as an adaptive response to help us solve the complex social problems life occasionally throws at us.

The authors of this challenging new idea, known as the analytical rumination hypothesis, argue that the symptoms of depression keep us focused on solving the complex problems that triggered our depression in the first place.

A depressed mood promotes an analytical thinking style, reduces motivation and leads to social-withdrawal and low energy levels, all of which minimise the likelihood of us being distracted from our problem-focused ruminations. The argument goes: the more time and energy we can devote to analysing the triggering problems, then the more likely we are to arrive at useful, growth-promoting answers.

Rather than just viewing depression as a disorder, the analytical rumination hypothesis sees it as an adaptive response to complex social problems, in the same way fever is an unpleasant, but adaptive, response to infection. Overthinking (analytical rumination) is to depression as high temperature is to influenza.

Being depressed, of course, is never pleasant, but the accompanying state of heightened analytical focus has its advantages. A large body of research has shown that depressed individuals are often more accurate in their perceptions of reality.

Depressed individuals also appear to be better at what psychologists call “mind reading” – that is, they are better able to infer other people’s intentions and feelings on the basis of observable behaviour and situational context. These heightened abilities are the byproducts of a depressive analytical thinking style that can enhance accuracy on complex tasks. So, if we have a complex life problem, it might help to be depressed for a while.

In our rush to medicate and chase away even the mildest states of depression, we may actually be doing ourselves a disservice. Perhaps this is why the current rates of depressive relapse are so high, especially when depression is treated with drugs alone.

Our rising divorce rates, fragmenting families and diminishing job security are fertile grounds for the types of problems that trigger depression. In addition to addressing these social concerns, more research aimed at treating and preventing depression is critical to reversing current trends. The analytical rumination model might turn out to be a dead end, but we really need to explore all new leads.

Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor at Zayed University

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas