This article focuses on founders, and I've wondered if depression in founders is actually less "Founders get depressed" and more "Depressed people become founders".
My theory is this: being regularly depressed causes folks to regularly fix their depression. They say "What is going to make me happy?", and then they push their lives farther. Extreme amounts of money represent freedom to do what one pleases when one pleases - and how do you get that money? By founding a successful company. And its not just the money - its the satisfaction that you've done something with your life.
I've often wondered why humans get depressed, and I've seen articles on depression being an evolutionary advantage. If its the case that depression drives people to work harder (as is the case for me), then it may be true that it is an evolutionary advantage (I certainly inherited it from my family). This may then also mean that there are a significant number of founders who are just going to be depressed, solitude/stress/success or not. I'd be interested to see how many founders have a family history of depression.
Dunno if you've ever been depressed, but clinically depressed people do not generally ask "What is going to make me happy?" It's more like "Nothing is ever going to make me happy." This is the difference between ordinary sadness/unhappiness and clinical depression. A mentally healthy person will say "I'm feeling unhappy. What will make me happy?" and then take action to make themselves happier. A clinically depressed person will say "I'm an unhappy person. I will always be an unhappy person. What's the use, and why should I bother?"
I think that what you're describing is better termed insecurity, the feeling that your worth and happiness is conditioned on external events. There seems to be a large - but not universal - correlation between insecurity and career success, particularly in the startup, financial, and executive worlds. The feeling that your worth is tied to your net worth tends to drive people to work harder and harder, and to take risks that secure people don't feel are worth it.
Insecurity can often be a trigger for depression, particularly when those external events that you've tied your worth to don't happen. But they're not the same thing. Plenty of insecure people cope with their insecurities through a combination of manic striving and mild delusion, while others face them directly, alter their fundamental beliefs about their worth, and end up secure. (Ironically, they often give up some financial security to do so - I know some high achieving programmers that gave up the career to travel, or open local small businesses, or become self-help gurus.) I suspect it's also possible to be clinically depressed without being insecure, but don't know enough about clinical psych to be sure of that.
Yeah I think you make a good point about insecurity, I bet that does drive a lot of people. Given some of the bashing behavior I see people engage in, I think insecurity is definitely a factor.
In my experience with depression: while it does span months/years at a time, things can be different from day to day. If we're talking about happiness a scale from -10 to 10, a Major Depressive Episode is not just 6 months of feeling -10. There are days where you can get up to a 0, and maybe moments where you're up to 3 or 4. It is in those 'breaths of fresh air' where I, and I imagine others, have the capacity to think "WTF is going on here, and how do I make this not happen again?" Then its just a matter of making a plan, and putting one foot in front of the other, even at -10.
>>If its the case that depression drives people to work harder (as is the case for me), then it may be true that it is an evolutionary advantage (I certainly inherited it from my family).
Depression can also cause people to commit suicide, which makes it somewhat difficult to frame it as an evolutionary advantage.
It depends on how this averages out. If on average the benefits (increased productivity leading to increased mating) outweight the drawbacks (people committing suicide), then it still might be an advantage. Evolution doesn't care about individuals, it's a statistical process.
Say from a purely utilitarian perspective, if you consider that the survivors of the depressed group are overall better off (higher overall payoff + inclusive of a strong negative in those under suicide) than the survivors of the non depressed group (say, mostly moderate payoff) then it works out. Kinda.
Yeah I agree: it seems to be a weird double edged sword. Simultaneously pushing people further, while also (in some cases) causing them to fall infinitely back.
I think the percentage of people who kill themselves versus the broader number of people who have depression is small.
My theory is this: being regularly depressed causes folks to regularly fix their depression. They say "What is going to make me happy?", and then they push their lives farther. Extreme amounts of money represent freedom to do what one pleases when one pleases - and how do you get that money? By founding a successful company. And its not just the money - its the satisfaction that you've done something with your life.
I've often wondered why humans get depressed, and I've seen articles on depression being an evolutionary advantage. If its the case that depression drives people to work harder (as is the case for me), then it may be true that it is an evolutionary advantage (I certainly inherited it from my family). This may then also mean that there are a significant number of founders who are just going to be depressed, solitude/stress/success or not. I'd be interested to see how many founders have a family history of depression.