[evan_au]

Is there a biological explanation for depression?

I heard a suggestion that a depressed state may be your body's way of stopping something that no longer works, and starting to work in a new way.
- This applies to depressed mood after loss of a job, loss of a loved one, etc.
- This event-driven depression is normal, people generally recover from it, and is excluded from clinical depression.

It is when depression becomes chronic (with no obvious trigger) that it becomes a chronic chemical imbalance, and needs professional help.

[tackem (OP)]

The worm hypothesis has a supporter!
An 8cm wriggly roundworm found in an Australian woman's brain.
How did it get there?
This was the first wriggly worm found in a human brain, but how many times have we looked?

[Bored chemist]

but how many times have we looked?

Essentially every time someone had a brain scan.
Here in the UK that's in the ballpark of a million per year if I read page 10 of this correctly.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Provisional-Monthly-Diagnostic-Imaging-Dataset-Statistics-2020-01-23.pdf

You do realise that cm and nm are different, don't you?

The point remains that, at least, the vast majority of people with depression do not have live worms wriggling round in their brains.

[paul cotter]

Indeed that worm was found in the woman's brain. HOWEVER the complaint was memory loss and not depression so you can flush your theory down the jacks.