pilowsky, on 2021-January-14, 17:39, said:
The 'will to live' is not a medical cause of death.
People don't say "oh well, nothing to live for - I'll just stop breathing".
Being depressed is a serious mental health condition; statements such as 'he lost the will to live' are lay constructs to explain events when people lack the knowledge to understand the problem.
The plane crashed because the pilot lost the will to fly.
It sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?
How about "I lost at Bridge because the King was on the wrong side" Well, how did the others with the same hand win?
Hence the metaphor, "you play the hand you're dealt", but some play it better than others.
Try instead, "The doctor, family, friends and society lost interest in caring for them, and then they died of whatever illness overtook them" - you'll be closer to the mark.
When a country's leader has no interest in caring for its citizens, look at what happens.
Not wishing to stray too far into your area of expertise and with apologies if I do, I feel the links and feedbacks between the false (largely) dichotomy of mental/psychological illness or disorders and the physical still does not get the attention it deserves. At the personal level I have experienced many aspects of the psychological stressors, depressors, physical consequences and/or causes, impacts of medications. However the link between what happens in someone's life ad the speed with which it can affect you physically in my view goes beyond a nice simple physical explanation to allowing the concept of "losing the will to live" or "dying from stress/misery/lack of hope", "lack of company, loneliness, lack of society" etc
In fact regarding links between the physical and the psychological 2020 and 2021 so far has had devastating impacts on me physically and psychologically and despite some ignoramuses in this world saying that we dont need gyms I'm heading to my gym with my mask for some much needed exercise and peace and time to think
On an area I feel safer talking about there are very interesting studies in the different components of therapies and how they are regarded as contributing to or explaining improvements in pscyhological well-being. What is fascinating with all the interest in and importance on evidence based approaches is how little unique variance can be explained by any single therapy most of the time, and how much relates to common factors of nearly all therapies and the psychological equivalent of the placebo effect, simply acting or seeking some sort of assistance and the expectation of improvement. Apologies for garbling my memory of various studies; I'm too tired to look for them. Also without wanting to sound too unprofessional the reason there is considerable evidence for some particular types of therapies is that they are easily manualised and studied, when most arent