Anyone else feel like their intelligence has taken a hit?

You're missing the point and feeding a narrative that OP doesn't need to hear. Im sure the literature says it disturbs function in a real way for some people but that doesn't mean he is actually losing his overall intelligence which I believe is what he is worried about. And because this thread comes up constantly ("am I getting dumber") I thought it'd be helpful to talk about how common that feeling is. Depression can do those things to memory etc, for sure, but that is not the important thing to convey here. I'm not sure if English is your first language or not but this is mostly a support thread, we're not here to argue about what mechanisms are or aren't possible. I only referenced my own problems to give OP anecdotal support so they know this is a really common occurrence across the board, I'm not sure why you're insisting I was saying all depression is the same. Maybe his functions are being effected by depression but in the interest of not playing into this awful narrative a lot of us entertain about being irreparably broken, I was reassuring him that his feelings are a common side effect and he's not, in fact, broken. If it makes him feel better to know that poor functionality may be measurable and have a real cause in depression, neat, but he didn't indicate anything other than the same feeling many of us experience which is mostly an existential paranoia rather than anything rooted in measurable evidence. Moreover, yes it's common knowledge that those NTs are involved in depression but it's laughably simplistic to just say oh you're negative because you have a serotonin problem. Again, that model is outdated and NTs are a far more sophisticated system than any of us laymen can explain so ya know it's not a good idea to try and diagnose people's neurotransmitter profile when you have no idea what you're talking about.

/r/depression Thread Parent