He's A Born Pessimist!

Written by craig

Some people see the glass as half empty. Others see it as probably carcinogenic and undrinkable anyway. We all have 'em, those friends who see a cloud in every silver lining. Yep, I found another study.  

Sometimes people really do see a pile of dollar bills and their first thought is about how many germs there are craling all over it. Usually, we just cop out and blame everything on the mother for how she raised them. I mean, it's a centuries-old tradition and mothers tend to just accept this kind of abuse.

Well, maybe it's time to let a bunch of old ladies off the hook. Brian J. Mickey and about twelve other researchers looked at emotion processing, major depression, and a particular genetic variant, and found just what one might expect: people with "low-expression NPY genotypes" were more likely to respond negatively to pain, and were more likely to get diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. 

We inherit tendencies toward heart problems, Alzheimer's, and, apparently, depression. With the first two, there are drugs we can take to improve the odds and everybody's fine with that. There are also drugs that work miracles with depression. Some day, everybody will be fine with that too.