Category: Depression

The study, conducted by Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, reached the conclusion after analysing data from a US national health survey (Krebs & Johansen, 2013).

Among the 130,000 participant, 22,000 had taken psychedelic drugs like LSD, peyote or magic mushrooms at some point in their lives. Participants were asked about whether they’d had treatment for mental health problems, or experienced psychosis, depression, or other psychological distress.

After adjusting for risk factors, like age and exposure to very stressful events, they found no connection between either recent or lifetime use of psychedelics and increased rates of mental health problems.

In fact, there was some weak evidence of the positive effects of psychedelics.

The researchers also found no evidence of ‘acid-flashbacks’ or other strange perceptual phenomena among people who had used psychedelics. Moreover, as they explain in the paper, published in the journal PLOS ONE:

“Psychedelics often elicit deeply personally and spiritually meaningful experiences and sustained beneficial effects. [However,] psychedelics can often cause [a] period of confusion and emotional turmoil during the immediate drug effects and infrequently such adverse effects last for a few days after use.”

This result fits in with other studies which find that, unlike many other illicit drugs, psychedelics are not addictive and do not promote compulsive use:

• A study of long-term peyote use by Native Americans found no evidence of psychological or cognitive deficits (Halpern et al., 2005).
• Amazon rainforest dwellers who had used dimethyltryptamine—which is similar to psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms—in over 360 religious ceremonies had no psychological or cognitive deficits (Bouso et al., 2012).

Researcher, Pål-Ørjan Johansen explained:

“Everything has some potential for negative effects, but psychedelic use is overall considered to pose a very low risk to the individual and to society. Psychedelics can elicit temporary feelings of anxiety and confusion, but accidents leading to serious injury are extremely rare.”

What this study can’t tell us is whether psychedelic drugs could be good for some people and bad for others and the results even out.

That said, Teri Krebs concludes:

“Over the past 50 years tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of long-term problems.”

Image credit: Evan

When it comes to pinpointing the source of our woes, we tend not to think too much about the little hassles of everyday life; after all they’re just little hassles, nothing compared to the big stuff.

You’re late for a meeting, you run out of biscuits or you get a parking ticket; irritating certainly, but nothing really serious, or anything like it.

Instead, we tend to blame the big events in life: divorce, disease and bereavement. And, when looking for what puts people over the edge, that’s exactly where psychological researchers have concentrated their attention: on the big stuff.

But many are waking up to the fact that although the little hassles in life are smaller, they’re also more numerous, so they can really add up over time. And, whether stressful events are big or small, it matters a lot how we deal with them.

Daily stressors

In new research published in Psychological Science, Charles et al. (2013) looked at people’s reactions to everyday stressors and how this played out a decade later. Participants were asked about their daily stressors over eight days and generally how they felt. People reported having all the usual sorts of stressors like having arguments, a fridge breaking down or being late for an appointment.

Then, 10 years later, they were revisited and asked whether they had been treated for anxiety, depression or any other emotional problems in the last year.

What the results showed was that how people reacted to the little stressors of everyday life predicted whether they developed psychological problems a decade later (incidentally, the number who did report a disorder was almost one in five).

This fits in with other recent studies which have also shown that people’s reactions to ordinary stressors predict depressive symptoms (e.g. Parrish et al., 2011).

Whether problems are big or small, what matters is how we react to them. People who tend to do worst are those that have the strongest emotional reaction to both big and small events.

We tend to think that depression is always a reaction to some really bad thing happening and sometimes it is; but sometimes it’s all those little things piled on top of one another that can get you down.

Image credit: Stephen Poff

I came across this incredible demonstration of the placebo effect in Kirsch et al., (2008), reviewing results from 35 clinical trials of modern antidepressant medication (things like Prozac):

“The response to placebo in these trials was exceptionally large, duplicating more than 80% of the improvement observed in the drug groups. In contrast, the effect of placebo on pain is estimated to be about 50% of the response to pain medication.”

In other words 80% of people’s improvement after taking drugs like Prozac was exactly the same as if they took a sugar pill. Pain pills, on the other hand, do more over and above the placebo.

And antidepressants didn’t even really work for severely depressed people:

“The difference in improvement between the antidepressant and placebo reached clinical significance, however, in [..] severely depressed patients […] the apparent clinical effectiveness of the antidepressants […] reflected a decreased responsiveness to placebo rather than an increased responsiveness to antidepressants.”

So, for the severely depressed antidepressants seemed more effective because the placebo didn’t work so well.

It’s a dilemma because the pills are doing something, but what? Is it just the effect of believing they will help you? Does it matter how much you believe? Is it the fact that you get them from a doctor who tells you they will help?

Quite apart from the whole debate about the prescription of antidepressant medication, it really shows the amazing power of our beliefs on how we feel.

Image credit: Christin

Like anything that has transformed our lives, the internet has also attracted its fair share of naysayers and detractors who claim that it is bad for us.

Two of the more respectable claims made against the internet are that it is addictive and can increase loneliness and depression.

Internet loneliness and depression

Perhaps the more counter-intuitive of the two is the idea that the internet causes loneliness, given that it is a medium for communication. Some have argued, though, that people end up using the internet instead of socialising face-to-face.

More than ten years ago, back when the internet was nothing more than a big bouncing baby, a group of researchers discovered what they called ‘the internet paradox’. Despite being another way of communicating with other people, they found that internet use was associated with increased depression and loneliness (Kraut et al., 1998).

But, when the researchers followed up the same people 3 years later, these effects had disappeared (Kraut et al., 2002). Not only that, but they also found internet use was associated with increased well-being and social involvement.

Now the internet has reached adolescence, this up and down—yes, the internet’s bad for you, no it’s good for you—is still the story. Some research has come out positive, some neutral (e.g. Huang, 2009), some very cautiously negative ( e.g. Stepanikova et al., 2009). Similarly inconclusive results have been found when looking specifically at email, chatrooms or general sociability.

My bet on the true answer would be the usual answer to very complex questions: it depends on a lot of things. On average, though, for most people it’s unlikely that internet use causes depression or loneliness. Certainly nothing to be concerned about compared with the huge potential benefits.

Internet addiction

The question of whether it’s possible to become addicted to the internet has proved more controversial for experts. The debate became particularly heated over whether it should be included in the official manual of psychological disorders, the ‘DSM’ (in the end it’s not there, yet).

One of the reasons it’s so difficult to decide whether internet addiction exists is it’s partly an argument about the meaning of the word addiction. A way to resolve this is by defining internet addiction clearly—write down what an internet addict looks like—then try applying this definition to loads of people you think might be addicts and, if the cap fits…

But, when Byun et al. (2009) examined 39 studies on internet addiction, they found the cap didn’t fit. In fact the most popular definition of an internet addict didn’t make sense. It failed to distinguish between people who were psychologically distressed and so-called internet addicts.

So it looks like the idea of an internet addict as a useful diagnostic tool doesn’t work.

Actually you don’t need to do any of this research to reach the conclusion that the concept of an ‘internet addict’ is nonsense. That’s because the internet is a medium of communication, not an end in itself. Someone may spend hours every day ordering vodka online, but you’d be hard-pressed to argue they were an internet addict rather than an alcoholic.

Instead of the internet itself, prime targets to be described as online addictions are gambling, pornography and shopping, although many still argue that people can’t be addicted to these things since they are closer to compulsions.

So, there’s little evidence that people really become addicted to the internet in the true sense of either word.

Assorted mumbo-jumbo

Other less respectable claims are made about why the internet might be bad for us. But these aren’t based on any research and are often mumbo-jumbo dreamed up by people desperately trying to think of something to say that will attract attention. It pains me to mention them, even if only to rebuke them, but it has to be pointed out that there’s little or no evidence for any of it.

Take the UK tabloid headline from earlier this year that ‘Facebook spreads syphilis’. Here’s the world-class reasoning used to reach this conclusion: syphilis infections in part of the UK have been on the increase; some people have sex with people they first met on Facebook; therefore Facebook spreads syphilis.

Other claims made about the internet are marginally less facile but employ the same level of reasoning skills. Here are a few you may be familiar with: the internet will give you cancer, make you fat, worried, stupid, distracted, less creative, unable to concentrate, and so on. Presumably that’s all on top of the addiction, loneliness, depression and syphilis.

There’s no point in discussing any of these here because PsyBlog is dedicated to the research and, as far as I’m aware, there’s no research backing up any of these wilder claims.

So, until such time as that changes: keep calm and carry on clicking.

Image credit: Nataliej