Posted by SLS on April 6, 2009, at 15:58:58
In reply to Depression and IQ, posted by Cass on April 5, 2009, at 15:51:51
> Sometimes I feel like depression lowers my IQ by at least 20 points, seriously.
Of course it does. In my experience, not only does depression reduce the speed of thought, it also reduces the level of sophistication at which the mind works.
I like to call what depression does to one's mental status as a reduction in FUNCTIONAL IQ. One may still score high in an IQ test when given enough time to complete it, but in the real world, this level of intelligence does not equate to real-time intelligence. Also, we have completely failed to factor in the deficits in memory that depression produces. Without short-term memory encoding, one cannot synthesize sophisticated ideas and understandings that require multiple steps of processing. This further reduces functional IQ.
So...
Is our IQ what we test at, or, rather, what we now function at. Having had several complete remissions, I can tell you, without equivocation, that my functional IQ immediately jumps up to where I originally tested at once I respond to treatment. This new-found intelligence really did scare me at the time. I might not have been any smarter than the people around me, but I was much smarter than I could have ever dreamed I could be when compared to the vegetative, oppressive, suppressive, and mind altering state of the depression that I had been confined to for as long as I could remember.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:888842
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090331/msgs/889019.html