Thanks Mom and Dad

*hugs*

I lost the parental lottery, too.

It sucks.

I did not feel depressed until I turned 10, which was when we moved out into the country and a lot of things changed. Before that, as far back as memory goes, I was scared half out of my mind night and day, and terrified often.

I think the depression was masked by contant fear. That made it weird, because as the threats became less dangerous I kept feeling worse and worse.

Incidentally, there really is no treatment for virtually lifelong depression. Drugs can mask the bad feelings, but depression is the result of a failed mechanism, where the social emotions -- the green lights and red lights that guide normals in their social learning from childhood on -- don't work in people like me: the greens stay dark and the reds glow dimly, sometimes brightening or flashing momentarily. The most drugs could ever do is attenuate the bad feelings. They cannot create good feelings, not in the sense of social emotions. I know that the good social emotions exist only because I've observed their functioning in other people, and in dogs and cats.

Some lifelong depressions can be treated; mine is a case in point. I'll probably be on meds for the rest of my life, and it took me and the doc four years of trying various combinations to come up with the magic formula.

I also had to unlearn years of negative thinking, and that required therapy from a psychologist. None of this "lay on the couch and talk about your childhood" stuff, just straightforward coaching in how to think positively (or at least neutrally) about myself. Hard work. Worth every bit of effort.

Joyless, have you really investigated all your options? For me, meds only wouldn't have worked. The therapy was critical, and my therapist charged on a sliding scale, so she could treat people who couldn't afford full price.

I spent years walking that particular valley of shadow called depression, and I can't think of anyone I dislike enough to wish it on. Keep on pursuing mental health. It's _fabulous_.

I don't remember parental abuse or neglect. But I do know that depression has happened on both sides of my family. In my mother's case her first bout with depression happened after my dad's first heart attack. My bout happened after a similar loss. I suspect any sort of traumatic emotional loss, neglect, betrayal coud be one of those things that are associated with depression.

Apparently bipolar disorder has a heritability of around 85% (ref), but there's no evidence of a shared environmental effect, i.e. suggesting that it's not a parenting thing. Mind you, with a heritability that high, I would expect it to be difficult to pick up any other effects.

Incidentally, on depression generally, I found Malignant Sadness by Lewis Wolpert to be very useful in understanding the condition. Obviously it helps that he's a top-class scientist and communicator, who suffered a bout of depression relatively late in life.

Bob

Depression occurs because of over worrying about emotional needs not being met, so it's really not surprising that parental neglect is related to depression. Why is this a "new" finding?

This is an tough question. Being BP is not easy, but at least there is alot of interesting science involved with it.

I remember from reading the 15 books I bought when I was manic there is a 1 in ~10,000 chance in being bipolar in the general population, but 1 in 7 if one parent is BP and 1 in 2 if both parents are bipolar.

From what I know BP involves some physical/genetic predisposition then some stressful life event which triggers the BP predisposition.

My feelings on this is that BP is so much higher in children of BP parents because the children inherit the genetic vulnerability from their parents and then the stress of having a BP parent triggers the BP.

My mother is BP and untreated. Having a parent with untreated BP is not as much fun as you might think ;)

GrrlScientist: I mostly agree with JPS, but one quibble: as I heard it, the children of people with any mental illness are much more likely to develop BP. That is, the "heritability" isn't just BP parents to BP kids. IIRC, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia do tend to "inherit in kind", more so than BP anyway. I'm pretty sure the "predisposition" theme applies to several other mental illnesses as well. Indeed, I'm a "poster child" for heritable MI, having depression from my father's side and anxiety from Mom's (multiple examples on each side).

For Joyless, I second Karen's comment -- depression can indeed be treated. The biggest obstacle (after diagnosis) is that there's an awful lot of GPs, internists, and even some psychiatrists out there who prescribe antidepressants without knowing what the hell they're doing. Some important points:

(1) Patients with new AD prescriptions need to be checked on regularly, the doc should be asking you about side effects and your mood from week to week. They also need to be reachable in a crisis.

(2) Most antidepressants can take up to a couple of months to "kick in", though often they work much faster.

(3) The point is to find a medication or combo that fixes the depression without unacceptable side effects. If you are getting excessively nasty side effects, call the doc and tell them, so that they can try something else.

(4) Everybody's brain chemistry is different. Just because one drug doesn't work does not mean others won't, and variations in dosage can also make a difference. There can also be partial successes, which can often be improved into full success by tweaking the dosage or combining drugs. Note that "no feelings" or "feeling blank" is a common example of such a partial response.