Back on January 5th or 6th of this year, I was sitting in the waiting area of an orthopedic office in Los Angeles, reading a scientific paper for one of my previous semester’s neuroscience courses (I had taken an incomplete and instead of taking my final exam in December, I was allowed to take it at the end of January) while waiting for my boyfriend to be finished with his appointment. A man came and sat near me, asked if he could read the newspaper next to me, asked me what I was reading. I briefed him on my school situation, mentioning that I struggle with depression, and showed him the paper on a schizophrenia drug trial. It turned out that he was a neurophilosopher (or artist according to Wikipedia) by the name of Warren Neidich who was working on a book titled The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism, and the chapter he was writing had something to do with neuroarchitecture and epigenesis (not epigenetics). Being someone interested in the intersection of psych, neuro, and philosophy, naturally I was interested.
A couple things were especially interesting, though. In response to hearing that I have depression, he said he had always woken up in a good mood, all his life, and so had his brother and father. His average day-to-day mood, he said, has always been about an 8/10. The other interesting thing was when he suggested that having kids might help relieve my depression. My response was that if anything, having kids might make things worse because parenting as we all know is a highly stressful job, and I also am not certain about whether I want to pass on my genes. “I wouldn’t wish this kind of suffering on anyone,” I said. I know that for depression, genes aren’t the whole story, but of course they’re an important factor.
All in all, that gave me something to think about, and it was pretty cool to meet someone from that area of academia that I was once so crazy about and still have a soft spot for now. If I had met him back in 2012, I would have been freaking OUT because I was taking Philosophy of Art at the time and was extremely excited about neuroscience (I had declared it as my major that year), and consequently thinking a lot on the subjects of neuroaesthetics, cognitive psychology, emotional cognition, etc. In 2013 I wrote a partial research proposal for a study on the effect of oxytocin (the “love hormone”) on motor cognition in dancers. I had to finish that spring semester assignment over the summer because I had sunk into depression again (and that depressive episode continues today), but I managed to get an A in the class because I cared so much about the subject. In my other courses, I got a B, a C, and a C-. 
I digress.
Nikita Talks Depression 