Depression Has a Positive Effect

When we think about depression - sadness, apathy and preoccupation are the things that comes to our mind first but a new study has overturned it and suggests that depression too has a positive side-effect.

Bettina von Helversen (University of Basel, Switzerland), Andreas Wilke (Clarkson University), Tim Johnson (Stanford University), Gabriele Schmid (Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany), and Burghard Klapp (Charit Hospital Berlin, Germany) found that depressed individuals perform better than their non-depressed peers in sequential decision tasks.

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In their study, participants - who were healthy, clinically depressed, or recovering from depression-played a computer game in which they could earn money by hiring an applicant in a simulated job search.

In addition to resembling everyday decision problems, such as house shopping and dating, the task has a known optimal strategy.

The result showed that depressed patients approximated this optimal strategy more closely than non-depressed participants did.

Quiz on Depression
The World Health Organization reports that depression is one of the main causes of disability affecting about 121 million people worldwide. More tragically, it claims around 850,000 lives every year. Hence, it is important that we understand this affliction to help ourselves or our loved ones to cope and, hopefully, resolve it. How well do you know the facts about depression? Take this quiz and find out.

While healthy participants searched through relatively few candidates before selecting an applicant, depressed participants searched more thoroughly and made choices that resulted in higher payoffs.

The study is detailed in the forthcoming Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

Depression Calculator
A quick, simple and anonymous self-assessment health tool to assess the level of depression using the famous Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale.

Source-ANI

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