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You have higher cognitive ability, you realize how the world runs, you get depressed. Not the other way 'round.

I am lazy and I did a quick google and couldn't find a link...

However, I remember reading about a study in my college Psychology class that pointed to the fact that people depressed actually have a *clearer* view of reality when compared to the non-depressed. It's a rose colored glasses type of effect. When given questions about certain situations, clinically depressed persons tended to give more answers that matched up with the real-world reality of situations than the non-depressed.

In other words the world is shit I am justified in being depressed all the time.

I find it much more difficult to think logically about my own emotional problems when I am depressed. In that state, introspection is likely to lead to more depression. That's why it's referred to as a vicious cycle — depression is depressing! So it might be easier to figure out other people's problems but I'm skeptical that it actually leads to solutions to one's own social problems. Then again, perhaps that's just because I'm personally poorly socialized.

Depresses the hell out of me.

Depression May Provide Cognitive Advantages

I've been struggling with a real tough problem, and getting more and more depressed.
Now I read this, and I have hope of solving it! woo hoo!

I can't tell you how happy I am!

wait....

Most mental disorders are a result of an otherwise normal or useful mental process run-amok. Happiness and energy are good, but take them too far and you've got mania. Organization and hygine are good, but take them too far and you get OCD. Depression when half your family just died in a car wreck and your life is in turmoil is a normal part of coping, depression all the time when nothing is particularly wrong is a disease.

Give it a couple of years and it will be referred to as our "Outlook Orientation," and the government will commission a study to see if depressed people are being properly represented in grade school textbooks.

Honestly, we all know that there are things like "taking things too seriously" and "taking things too lightly". Depression isn't there as a cruel joke to make miserable people more miserable, it's to make sure that in a grave situation you take a honest look at the situation and deal with it. It's a natural self-defense mechanism that for example you probably wouldn't want to have sex, get pregnant and have a child in a bad situation, being a leftover from before contraception. Of course some people get too much of it, just like others want to cuddle the cute grizzly bear and don't see a problem until they make a Darwin award of themselves. Very few aspects of typical human behavior is really that irrational, though it can be really out of place in the modern world.

While depressive people tend to consider a problem very intensely and break it into lots of sub-problems and try to analyze what could have happened if some options were different, all those - ruminations (as the summary states) - still lead to nothing because the all the shit has already hit the fan and there is nothing that can undone that. so the thoughts go round and round and round again.

But chronic pain is not so wonderful.

Having an immune system is also beneficial to survival. Multiple sclerosis, not so great.

Nobel prize, here I come.

This is basically where people who are prone to depression have markedly less influence by illusiory conditions. They view the world as it is, without the rose tinted spectacles of the non-depressed.
This gives a general predisposition towards problem solving and accurate assessment of situations, allowing the excision of the personal investment in problems, treating the problem as a more logical construct, which overall leads to better problem solving (which has been researched since the late 70s and 80s).

However, depression being what it is, it doesn't make life around a depressed person any easier, and isn't that great for the depressed person themselves (I speak as one that's prone to that state of mind and have to be a little careful from time to time; it does make things in my favourite field of IT Business Continuity seem somewhat easier than it does for most though, with me jokingly being accused of having enough paranoia for the whole hospital).
The trouble with "Depressive Realism" is that it's not entirely evident whether it's the realistic state of mind that brings about depression (having trouble with the normal chit chat that greases the social wheels, yet goes nowhere, is a real drag and will definitely get you down), or whether it's the depressive state of mind that leaves you more objective.

Ruminant depression is a different order of magnitude from end-of-universe major depression. Which do they mean?

Sherwin Nuland on electroshock therapy [ted.com]

At the other end of the spectrum, it's just a mood disorder (and working title of Annie Hall).

Anhedonia [wikipedia.org]

Years ago I read an article about stress and the immune system. The claim was that under stress, the immune cells leave the blood stream and enter into the skin cells. Hence the collapse of immune levels in the blood stream. Stress is often associated with physical confrontation. Perhaps under this circumstance the body is more concerning about fighting off infection from skin trauma than whether the last meal was a mite tainted, or some child has picked up a sneeze.

I haven't seen this followed up, but does it really make sense that body's response to stress is to shut down the immune system? Never to me, it didn't.

Another great one is the doctors instructing you that "whatever your itch system conveys, ignore it".

'Itchy' neurons tell mice when to scratch [www.cbc.ca]

So we have an entire nervous subsystem devoted to itch, and our only response is to not listen?

I read an article that the appendix is now believed to act as a pocket of gut bacteria to restart the gut after a core dump.

And then there was the whole thing about "junk DNA" where junk is apparently a scientific word meaning "you can't write a successful grant to study this". From another perspective, at the original sequencing cost of $1 per base pair, I can feel their pain.

I get mighty tired of the scientific meme "functionless until proved grantable". Were the scientists originally responsible for this, or the surgeons?

How many doctors does it take to change a light bulb? Three, but while they're at it, they'll change the socket too.

I'm currently doing a very complicated documentation job about a system I've not worked on previously (its essentially been abandoned and I have to put together what they've done so it can be continued). I'm going to put on a few Radiohead tracks and see if it gets any easier.

When people are depressed there can be considered two types -- 1) survivors and 2) dead

The dead are people who are actually dead or pretty much on their way to that end. Those remaining are survivors. To become a survivor, one has to adjust and adapt. Closing down the emotional parts of the personality is just such a coping method that works for many who would otherwise be ruled by their less stable emotional components. The observations made are essentially looking at "what's left over" when the emotional part of a personality is suppressed.

As another commenter pointed out, depressed artists use their more intense and unstable emotional core to enhance their works. So the result of depression is not always becoming more analytical and good at problem solving, but rather, it is a common result found when all other aspects of a personality are controlled, limited or suppressed.

And those that do not manage to control, limit or suppress their emotional components end up in jail, mental institutions or dead and generally progress beyond simple depression (meaning they no longer fit into the category of "the depressed") into much more dramatic categories.

I have a history of dealing with depression that goes back many years. It comes and goes. But lately, I have succumbed to levels of anxiety that are wholly unfamiliar to me. It seems that the only way to reverse the anxiety (besides Xanax) is to revert to a more depressed state. The depression actually feels comfortable by comparison. I suppose that's because I'm used to it.