Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanojia

This is why people do things like buy lottery tickets, right?

So their ability to actually assess what their odds of winning are are really, really poor.

Like everyone thinks they're better than average.

There's this group of people who are depressive realists who are better, accurate judges of reality.

So now here's the situation.

you're depressed.

Now you may be looking out into the future and there are a couple of different options.

So you see the world is bleak in front of you.

Okay.

So option number one is that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain.

You can start an antidepressant, take an SSRI, boost your serotonin levels.

And I'd say one out of three people benefits a lot from that.

Okay.

Second option that you've got is you can do cognitive behavioral therapy, but maybe your brain isn't actually like messed up.

Maybe you're not actually having cognitive distortions.

Maybe you are an accurate judge of your bleak future and you are depressed as a result of that.

And so what we tend to see in cognitive behavioral therapy is that doesn't work for everyone.

And so if you don't have a chemical imbalance and if you don't have a whole lot of cognitive distortions, then what do you do?

This is where we enter into a discussion of existential depression.

Now, today's video is going to be a little bit more detailed and a little bit more abstract, where if you have existential depression, you're probably a little bit philosophical.