Posted by IsoM on January 16, 2002, at 2:21:05
In reply to Re: Genetics of Depression » IsoM, posted by bob on January 16, 2002, at 0:13:05
Have to agree with everything you said, Bob. So many composers, artists, & writers suffered from depression. Dvorak, one of my favourite composers had a happily married family life & was deeply religious too. He suffered from no known problems & he did wonderful compositions, so there's one argument to say normalcy can go hand-in-hand with creative genius!
I read those reports about the Borna virus & its pssible links to depression. Came across it years ago in a science article. I'd like to see more studies done on it as I find it rather intriguing. I do believe there's probably many different reasons for depression all working together to make our generation one of the worse afflicted in history.
Mark me as another member of the reasonably normal childhood - depression group. :)
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> I think most would rather be happy, than creative every now and again. There must be some creative people out there that weren't mentally ill. As you say, we have to accept the bad with the good for now, because we have no other choice.
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> Your right, I didn't suggest we eliminate bad traits by not reproducing. I was just referring to an article on genetics which actually was linked on this board. It suggested that these afflictions were due to pathogens , and not genetics, because if it had been otherwise, the incidence of the diseases would have reduced down to random genetic mutation level since even a less than one percent reduction in reproduction rate will reduce the occurrence of a gene in the population. I was just mentioning how I wasn't sure that mental illness reduces offspring all that much, if at all compared to the rest of the population.
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> I also didn't meant to suggest that altruism was a bad thing... on the whole it has been instrumental in passing our genes on to the next generation.
poster:IsoM
thread:90162
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020110/msgs/90422.html