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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 27 2015, @08:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the misery-loves-company dept.

NPR's Shots has an article discussing the correlation between infections and depression and other mental illness:

Late last year, [associate professor] Turhan Canli published a paper [...] asserting that depression should be thought of as an infectious disease. "Depressed patients act physically sick," says Canli. "They're tired, they lose their appetite, they don't want to get out of bed." He notes that while Western medicine practitioners tend to focus on the psychological symptoms of depression, in many non-Western cultures, patients who would qualify for a depression diagnosis report primarily physical symptoms, in part because of the stigmatization of mental illness.

"The idea that depression is caused simply by changes in serotonin is not panning out. We need to think about other possible causes and treatments for psychiatric disorders," says Canli.

His assertion that depression results from infection might seem far-fetched, or at least premature, but there are some data to bolster his claim.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:22AM (#255354)

    Does "inflammation of my penis" count?

    Perhaps, take a look at the walls of your parents basement under blacklight and tell us.