Electrical stimulation in sub-cortical nuclei to treat depression | Hacker News Reader

Electrical stimulation in sub-cortical nuclei to treat depression

psychcentral.com

16 pointskghose6 comments

There doesn't seem to be a mention of side effects in this article, and I'd be very hesitant to seek this treatment route if it had the same side-effects as electroconvulsive therapy: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Electroconvul...

Deep Brain Stimulation has the benefit of being more directed. An electrode is lowered into a part of the basal ganglia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia) and current pulses are used to activate neuron groups. Its not clear how it works, but it is certainly more directed than electro convulsive therapy.

But, it is true, we don't really know the long term effects. However, DBS for parkinson's has been a steady success, so we can hope.

Very interesting. I notice a lot of articles on depression and mental health get posted on HN. I know depression is a serious issue among startups so I also wonder if its not just startups but programmers in general?

I know that I myself am very prone to depression. For years I've struggled with it and it can kick in and fade out very quickly. For me I believe it's hereditary but I wonder what the cause is for others in this field. Obviously the startup lifestyle is stressful enough for the cause of depression to be obvious. But what is it about the profession of programming minus the startup lifestyle that makes us so likely to be depressed?

If other programmers are anything like me then they work alone for long periods of time. Don't go out much and don't socialize often. It's a solitary life and you're also likely to be smarter than other people so it's hard to really feel connected with others. Interests may be very different than others around you too which doesn't help. It's not that we're socially awkward (well, at least Im not, I'm actually really great at being social when I need to, very well liked, but I prefer to stay away from most social situations) it may just be that there aren't enough people like us around to socialize with. It makes sense that we form relationships with people we find across the world online rather than next door.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough. This treatment is interesting and I think its posting here says a lot about what we as a community deal with mentally.

I think depression is an issue among people in general. Perhaps people on HN are simply more willing to share with the (psuedonymous) internet at large?

Clinical depression is not so rare (unfortunately) and I don't know if it is a speacial issue among people who do startups.

The treatment described here is for people who don't respond to cognitive and drug therapy.

My interest in this topic is also from a basic science aspect. I am very intrigued by the fact that stimulating a part of the brain thought to be responsible for selecting motor acts can result in alleviation of something as complicated and "cognitive" as depression.

I relate very strongly to everything you say here. I've been diagnosed, hospitalized, and medicated on 3 separate occasions for major depression. In every case, I believed then and still believe that it was avoidable, and mostly situationally caused, regardless of the fact that it does eventually manifest as a severely disrupted and debilitating brain-state that could be characterized as a medium-term illness.

I am frequently exasperated by the discussions on HN. I think that the now-popular model of depression as an illness is better than the old-fashioned model of depression as The Blues, but I also think the newer model is still ignorant and harmful in new and different ways. EDIT: The view of depression as a medical condition may be a handy lens for allowing hospitals to deal with emergencies effectively, but for the suffering individual, it is woefully incomplete and even downright misguided. After dealing with it in my own life for 15 years, I've become convinced that Depression is a biopsychosocial [1][2] constellation of interacting phenomena involving bi-directional feedback between one's mind and one's life. And everyone experiences this feedback loop, even if it does not lead everyone into depression.

I've found it far, far more productive in my own life to analyse and try to improve the underlying causes, as opposed to medicating and _identifying_ with what I view as a temporary disorder, more similar to the flu than to a chronic disease. (Clarification: I support the use of medication to help with the "bottom of the trough" stage - that is, the temporary, crippling, chemical brain disorder phase. I am extremely suspicious of indefinite reliance on it, but I cannot rule out the possibility that some individual cases are so severe that long-term medication is the rational choice.)

I would add to your list that in this community, our ambitions are extremely high relative to most normal people. With very high ambition comes the likelihood of strong disappointment. I also find that being smarter than most people is a deep rabbit hole that makes a lot of social, professional, and authority-related interactions very weird. I think it's sad that it's so taboo here to talk about that issue in particular.

I wish more people would focus more on the nitty-gritty practical causes, like you do in your third paragraph. Despite my encounters with depression, I have spent the vast majority of my life being happy, active, social, fulfilled, unmedicated, and in every meaningful sense not depressed at all. I attribute this to a mix of choices about how I life my life, along with a fair amount of good luck. After all, we cannot control everything in life. There are gatekeepers. I've gotten jobs that led to incredible opportunities, relationships, and friendships. What if me or the interviewer had had an off day? What if they'd chosen someone else to interview me that I didn't hit it off with? A doctor can't address things like that - things that have huge impact. (A therapist can, sort of. I am a fan of CBT.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model

[2] http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=1...

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