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Is depression related to intelligence?

My experience has been very simple. The more intellectual a person is, the more likely they are to analyze, overanalyze, and reanalyze a situation. frequently resulting in wondering why they didn't do this or that. also not being able to be truly spontaneous do to thinking too much.
I fit this catagory. my iq has always floated in the 140's (although my parents never told me this, and I never did well in school)
I have had some very dull-normal level friends. They ride on life - there are no thoughts about why something happened, or what else could have happened - they just live. They don't get bummed out by over analyzing things.
 
Apollo - "i was branded a "thinker" from a young age... not necessarily intelligent, i simply think into things to a higher level than most. i'm overly analytical. i get enveloped in my own thoughts often. yes, i'm often thinking cynical, depressing thoughts about the hopeless nature of human life. i get extremely depressed quite easily, i'm prone to suicidal thoughts as i simply can't handle my own mind... all because i think far too far into the smallest of things.
i certainly agree with this, seeing as i relate to it on a personal level
quote:
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I contend that intelligence enables highly analytical thought procceses that lead to negative thougths and in turn depression. Isn't it always the smart people that are highly cynical?
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on the contrary, i think it takes the same level of intelligence to be happy & enjoy ones self despite the depressing side of life as it does to get lost in it (the depressing side of life).
i think depression and intelligence have as much in common as happiness and intelligence. "
What he said.
-plaz out-
 
My reason for posting was that these posts are completely unusable for anything other than anecdotal evidence.
Who would think that posts on a message board could be anything other than anecdotal anyway? Sounds like you are saying there is no point discussing it because we can't "prove" anything, but just discussing it anecdotally also has value.
Also regarding the 7 intelligences - remember that theories and measures of intelligence have changed many times, and it's likely they will change again. Just because something is commonly used or referred to doesn't mean it is perfect.
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Originally posted by *chaoscat*:

As for the seven types of intelligence, they are likely to be interrelated anyway. I do think depression may be seen more in people who display different intelligences. I seem to have good pattern recall ability, which can help with mathematical, musical, memory and spatial tasks. It could also be this ability that makes me remember negative things more often than others might (for example).
There are a few competing theories of intelligence. Gardner and Sternberg both proposed multiple intelligences. Gardner's is the one referred to in this post, he later expanded it to nine to include existential and naturalistic intelligences to verbal, spatial, etc. Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence breaks it into three components: Analytic, Practical, and Creative. But, the point is that neither of these theories refute the theory that there is general intelligence or (g). The (g) factor is posited to represent the overall ability of the mental system to function quickly, efficiently, and novelly. How this is broken down into subcategories is where Gardner and Sternberg's theories come in.
These are just theories, there are no facts in behavior science (or any science, really).
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If you were really super-duper smart you could just think your way out of depression! That's why all these kinda smart people are depressed, because they're not smart enough to think their way out of a mental disease (like the guy in A Beautiful Mind).
^------- meant to be taken LIGHT-HEARTEDLY
Just thought that you guys were getting a little bit too indepth and serious about this.
 
if intelligence is related to depression...
then it's equally related to happiness.
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[rant]
i just had a thought, and i'm gonna write it out as it comes to me and post it here... i wouldn't call it my opinion, i'm just gonna write it here and you can make of it what you want...
in western society, people like to appear disadvantaged, lonely, hurt, mentally torn, emotionally damaged, and so on. they like to appear depressed. they like telling others about how harsh their lives have been, and they like having people spouting off lines like "oh my god!" "you poor thing!" "oh you are so strong, i can't believe you got through that!" it builds friendships and guilts enemies into favourable behaviour... it's an easy way out of snotty/selfish behaviour, trouble at school or mistakes made with loved ones.
please note, this does not include those with clinical depression and people who've been through genuine disruptions in their lives... i'm talking about victims of western society and it's effects on human behaviour...
anyway... generated, extrapolated, talked up or whatever, people like telling others about their apparent depression... they like looking like they're mentally wounded, damaged, scarred or hurt...
if you think something diligently, believe it, tell it to others, try to think it, even materialise events in your past that would lead to it... you'll soon find it's a reality in your life. as is the nature of depression, it will soon become your life.
in a nutshell;
having noted the effect of others depression on their peers, people (often hormonally imbalanced and slightly irrational teenagers suffering from the realisation that everyone is just a needle in a haystack) tell themselves and others that they're depressed, they think they are depressed, make a note of doing depressing things and fabricate/extrapolate depressing situations/thoughts to proove it to others... think and act something all day long and you will become it.
plenty of people get depressed this way...
it's an unintelligent way to go. intelligent people will not act in such a way.
assuming that the entire world can be catagorised as "intelligent" and "unintelligent"... i think that when pressured with troublesome times or depressing thought patterns, intelligent people will get depressed and unintelligent people will get angry, as they don't understand or have the patience to deal with the problems the circumstances they are encountering have produced.
errr, so that's what i have to say... am i insane?
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[ 06 May 2002: Message edited by: apollo ]
 
Intelligence can be related to depression in that an intelligent person may have a more difficult time "fitting in" at school, work or other social areas. In turn, the person may turn to drugs and alcohol to help them fit in... In many cases, these items can help. But of course, drug and alcohol use can easily spiral out of control and into very deep depression.
 
i would have to come down on the side of no direct correlation between intelligence and depression, but i do believe that intelligence correlates to intermediate factors that can be related to depression. social isolation has already been discussed; another important one, in my opinion, is a person's level of expectation. for a given situation or experience, satisfaction is a function of two things: your expectations before the experience, and whether or not reality matched them. to use a business example: you go to a restaurant famous for its attentive service and incredible food. you can get great service a great meal, but your expectations might have been such that you're not completely satisfied with the experience. conversely, you're on a road trip and stop in some little podunk town in the middle of nowhere for dinner. your expectations are probably low, or at least uncertain. if you get the same level of service and the same quality of food that you got in that well-known restaurant, you're going to be really happy with it.
the same goes for life in general. bright kids are put into special programs, coddled, made to feel special - everyone basically tries to impart the belief that you can do anything and go anywhere. that's fine. the mistake is that most kids are given the impression that these things will happen just because they're smart, with no real effort on their part. they often develop unrealistic expectations of themselves and the world. when these don't materialize, they either lay the blame on themselves or on the world as a whole - either can be a source of depression. the first time you encounter someone on or above your level, you think the world is going to end. i've gone through this recently. anyone see any sense in this?
 
Is there an opposite to depression? Is there a chemically imbalanced reason for being content all the time? If thats the case, are you the opposite of intelligent?
 
Yes there is a mental desiease called mania. No a correlation between intelligence and depression does not imply a correlation between mania and intelligence.
Yes saying "depends what you mean by X" is a trick often used by insecure people. This of course doesn't imply that the claim is wrong. Essentially you have just done exactly what you accused him of doing (a verbal trick..people who argue like that are insecure to make your position seem more sound than it actually is). However, I will have to agree that this emotional intelligence thing/types of intelligence is BS. Go look in a dictionary intelligence is defined to be something like "general problem solving ability." Now isn't that pretty close to your intuitive notion of intelligence? We note that by definition intelligence is a single measure (your general problem solving ability) and not a several dimensional one.
You can of course argue that no such thing as intelligence exists but trying to say it has seven dimensions or some shit like this is good evidence that you aren't working from the right principles. I mean such a seven dimensional thing would simply not be intelligence, it might describe what makes people succesfull in their endeavors but the very fact that they are trying to relabel this intelligence means you have a radical misunderstanding of what intelligence is. It seems that alot of these people who say their are multiple dimensions of intelligence have been confused with the constant connections made in our society between smartness and goodness (part of the reason smart people in school are hated). They wish that other qualities be recognized as good so they claim that they are a dimension of intelligence.
It was my understanding calling intelligence what is measured by say the Stanford-Binet test was based on the fact that tests across many differnt areas seemed to have one common correlate (this would almost by definition by your general problem solving ability) and it was quite well correlated to this particular type of test.
As to the question of correlation this interesting article suggests just the opposite in general intelligence is correlated with decreased depression in boys but increased depression in girls. However, as the article goes on to state the correlation is far from perfect. In fact what I probably suspect is happening is that the correlation isn't valid in the extremely intelligent cases (like the correlation between intelligence and looks). Someones suggesting that intelligence is a cause of being differnt/social outcast which would obviously affect depression seems quite reasonable in the extreme cases while in less extreme cases it has the opposite effect (the group leader is never the really dumb one...he is smart but not brilliant usually). Ohh and it seems from the description this study selected people at random so their won't be any reporting bias.
Finally the person who said it wasnt a direct correlation what the fuck do you mean? That neither is causal in the other (they are both the effect of some common correlate?). Now this may be true (maybe for instance being an outcast causes both depression and increased intelligence because the person has nothing to do but develop that side) but on what grounds should we believe it. I mean there seems to be no good argument that there isn't a casal relation.
[ 13 May 2002: Message edited by: quale ]
 
if you do accept the definition offered by the dictionary, I find it hard to see the direct correalation between "problem-solving intelligence" and depression. I would say that the opposite was the case, since (using the fuzzy definition) people who are good at solving "problems" would be more likely to conquer their dark sides.
However, I would say that the several forms of intelligence enters again, because are these problems ALL kinds of problems? Emotional problems? Matematical problems? Political problems? You have to accept that most people are not good at all these disciplines.
I am still more likely to accept the biological definitons of depression and related diseases, and that depression does correalate with the amount of certain stress hormones in your body that might have come as a result of "over-thinking" (a lovely clinical term, I know)... It has been well-documented that stress hormones are one of the main causes of depression, and that excessive worrying and a never-resting brain are direct causes of elevated stress hormones.
 
Finally the person who said it wasnt a direct correlation what the fuck do you mean? That neither is causal in the other (they are both the effect of some common correlate?). Now this may be true (maybe for instance being an outcast causes both depression and increased intelligence because the person has nothing to do but develop that side) but on what grounds should we believe it. I mean there seems to be no good argument that there isn't a casal relation.
There are a lot of different ways they could be related, but why assume that a causal relationship is the most likely? If it was a causal relationship then every person who suffered from one would suffer from the other. This is clearly not the case, so this indicates it may be another variable which is only experienced by some people who are intelligent, that may cause them to get depressed. Is that a good enough argument for you?
Some of these other variables could be living up to the perceived expectation of others. A perfectionist attitude, which makes you think that whatever you achieve is never good enough. A perfectionist attitude could cause both depression, and cause you to work hard to do well and so appear "intelligent". There are many different ways they could be related, but a direct causal relationship is probably fairly unlikely since not everyone who is intelligent is depressed and vice versa.
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I am a very intelligent person (IQ 145-150). My whole life I have been depressed, until very recently. I
believe that intelligence is the realization of what COULD happen. Intelligent people always know that
situations have the potential to go bad, causing them anxiety. I definitely think the two are correlated.
Although I also think that the more intelligent you are, the higher happiness you are able to achieve.
Because they are logical, and logical perspective is the happiest form of life. I actually had this
realization while I was rolling once, it actually stuck with me.
 
I agree yasmapal, these days I am the happiest person I know. I seem to spend a lot of time telling other people why they don't need to feel angry or depressed about something. So yes, I do think happiness is related to intelligence too, or at least related to reasoning ability.
Then again, being depressed could be related to feeling extremely happy/content later in life, because you know how bad depression feels.
I suppose it's about learning to control your emotions through reasoning. That is what has helped me anyway. Perhaps many "intelligent" people have an increased reasoning ability, which somehow coincides with decreased emotional control? I know it was something I had to learn the hard way, through experiencing a depression phase.
 
well i've always considered myself a fairly intelligent person (not only by myself, but pretty much any teacher, lecturer, tutor, etc...), and sure enough i've been depressed all of my life...
although i wouldn't draw a directly proportional relationship between the two, there is no doubt that there's some degree of correlation...
like someone 2 posts above typed (sorry, forgot the name), intelligence heightens situations - if you're depressed, it will exasperate it... on the other hand, the happy moments will be equally more intense...
feelings such as love, friendship, interest for matters, are likely to be somewhat more satisfying when dealt with by an intelligent person... the down side being that when these things fuck up, it all goes horribly wrong...
...and this get to the exact centre-point of why i even take hard drugs in the first place... its a matter of stopping my brain from thinking, give it a break, stop stressing out all the time... its only a temporary solution, but by god is it efficient for that lapse of time...
 
There is a fine line between genuis and insanity. Smart people tend to overthink things. So when you start thinking of depressing things a smart person can think himself into depression. Also the smarter you are the more trouble you have relating to people with average intelligence. Hitler was a certified genuis and hes a perfect example of this. I also have strong opinions about how real depression is. If your brain is strong enough you can overcome most forms of depression. (but not serious chemical imbalances) So yes I believe intelligence and depression are related.
 
Put it this way:
You're on death row. Today is the day you're gunna get the chair.
The warden comes out and says "Instead of killing you, we'll only chop your index finger off"
Would you be happy? I probably would. Even when your fingers being chopped off?
It's because depression/happiness is set on expectations..we expected to get killed, but we only lost a finger - so we're happy.
If we lost a finger some other way randomly, by say, sticking your hand out a car door, you'd be cut, not happy.
Even though exactly the same thing has happened.
IE - once you drop X, you have this expectation of how high on life you can get. Once the X wears off, you feel a lot lower - perhaps no lower than before you took the X, but in comparison.
I fall into this category I believe of feeling depressed over silly situations. I'd write more but I gotta go to work so I'll finish this up tonight :)
 
No depression is not related to intelligence. Not more then it is related to stupidiness.
quale saying that anyone is insecure if he says 'depends what you mean by x' is a generalisation. It's also called communication.
1) intelligence people have a better memory, so things what went wrong or good will stick longer with them.
2) intelligence people can analyse quicker and more, so things will get intensified.
It will go both ways, depressive/mania.
Maybe intelligence people will live with higher peaks and lower downs. But there are no paths to conclude that depression correlates with intelligence.
 
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