What 4 Years of Depression Taught a Psychologist

Listen to the Hidden Brain podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/20Gf4IAauFrfj7RBkjcWxh What if depression was never a malfunction, but a signal your body was designed to send? In this video, we explore what psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg, a professor at Cornell University and author of The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic, calls the defect model of depression: why the "chemical imbalance" explanation may rest on far less evidence than we've been told, and how low mood might work the same way fever does, a built-in stop signal rather than a malfunction. Rottenberg knows this firsthand. He spent four years in a depression severe enough to end his academic career, before dedicating his life to studying the condition that nearly broke him. ____ Hidden Brain, hosted by me, Shankar Vedantam, is finally on YouTube! Like my podcast, this new video series will explore the unconscious patterns driving human behavior, our choices, and our relationships. ____ FIND HIDDEN BRAIN ONLINE Website: https://www.hiddenbrain.org/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiddenbrain/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenbrainshow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HiddenBrain/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hiddenbrain.bsky.social X: https://x.com/HiddenBrain Patreon/Hidden Brain+: https://www.patreon.com/HiddenBrain