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I think Emily brings up a great point, and one that we seem to be coming back to - controlling for individual difference in any study seems to be one main limiting factor. CBT and/or drugs don't work for everyone, where is this individual difference coming from? genes? With such a range of depressive disorders and each arising from different triggers or for different reasons, I'm sure depressive disorders are tricky to study biologically, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were genetic markers for depression (I could be wrong, but I think I've heard of a family link?).

I'm very interested in this idea of societally contructed illness, and I found myself wondering after class what epidemiological studies of depression might look like - across states, cities, cultures. I'm not sure how much can be extrapolated from simply percentages of people that are depressed, but I couldn't help but think that I knew what it would look like: I would expect cities (going with the "stressed out" trigger) to be more depressed, which wasn't the case (according to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22087867/ ) I know that's not the greatest source, but just looking at the top few depressed states...Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky...isn't what I expected. Thoughts?

Something else that's really interesting to me is CBT versus social networks, which we talked about briefly in class. I don't know specifics of CBT, but I would imagine some of the exercises are similar, and in a way CBT seems like a more intense form of social communication that we see within social groups.

As far as drugs vs. CBT, I still can't get over my initial negative reaction with drug therapy. Maybe it has something to do with, like Liz mentioned, just feeling like "talking it out" is more "natural" and therefore "better". I can't help but think that drugs are a band aid for the real problem. Along those lines while I think CBT is a better first option (I had never thought of the brain as plastic as Dr. Yadin spoke about), I want to go to the source of the problem and prevent it. CBT and drug therapy are great options for those with depressive illness, but why do we (in the U.S.) have the highest rates of depression in the world? I'm not talking about altering any biological factors that would prevent depression, but rather the environmental factors that lend to higher rates. If a major factor is stress, let's go to the source. How can we change these environmental factors to prevent illness?