Marco Anglesio wrote:
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> I am rather interested in the cognitive effects of depression - rather
> like a can of syrup poured over one's mind, as Carrol said. I do wonder
> whether this has a significant effect on self-correction and hence on
> workplace competence. Does anyone have any information in this respect?
>
The wildly varying combinations of symptoms shown by victims of depression suggest to me that what we call depression is probably a classification that mushes fairly distinct disorders together. Sort as if all illnesses which produced a fever were considered one illness. Probably, of course, not that extreme. I have suffered off and on for many decades (several decades before being diagnosed) from what I've come to refer to as "plain vanilla depression." But also other symptoms that continue even when that depression of mood is absent, and which can be grouped (probably not too cogently) under the broad description of anxiety. (And some of those "symptoms" may not be symptoms but habits caused by the initial depression.) For example: I'm reluctant to answer the phone -- and never do until the caller has identifed him/herself on the answering machine.
And memory problems. They can very in intensity for different people. I've always had extreme difficulty with names. For example, I've been trying to remember the name of the author of an article published in the 1970 _Milton Studies_. I can remember the article in some detail. I can remember some of the other publications by the same author. I can remember notes I took on it at the time I read it. I can remember my reasons for it being a really bad but for that reason important article. I can't remember the author's name. (And my computer notes at the time are buried in files temporarily not accessible.) And even here there are problems of labelling which may reflect lacunae in knowledge of the brain. It's not clear whether I have trouble _remembering_ that name or _retrieving_ the name -- and is there or isn't there a significant difference between "memory" and "retrieval"?
We're still pretty ignorant about the brain, its complex relations with the (rest of) the body, and "its" social relations.
At the support group meeting last night there was anew person there, a woman who has been in more or less constant depression for nearly two years, who lives along, and who is having increasing difficulties of handling details. She is moving next month & is being driven frantic by the necessity of keeping all the details in mind and performing the varying tasks (such as cleaning the apartment so the landlord can show it to prospective renters). You could _see_ her depression in her face -- but that is not always the case. She couldn't remember what it was like to be happy.
Carrol