Talk:Depression (physiology)

Untitled

Perhaps this belongs more on wiktionary, where the definition is absent too. I had to add it because of trying to resolve the first link in:

The combination of chlorpromazine with other antipsychotics may result in increased central depression, hypotension and extrapyramidal side-effects

--Cedders 18:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

proposal for deletion

User:raven1977 marked the page for deletion on the grounds

 Isn't this just a general definition of the word depression, when it refers to a reduction?

(Indeed the same could also apply to Depression (kinesiology), which was started by someone else, presumably for similar reasons.)

Objection I found it necessary to create a target for this meaning when doing disambiguation work on depression, including meteorological, geological, economic and medical meanings. We also have a more particular medical usage at Central nervous system depression. It is likely to be necessary again to use a separate page the next time someone tries disambiguating, and the multiple meanings, particularly in medicine and psychology, can be very confusing for readers unless correctly linked.

As stated above, I recognise the important separation between Wiktionary and Wikipedia. However, if this landing page is to be deleted, it is first necessary to fix any red links it will create and have a clear target from the disambiguation page. So far as I know, it is not possible to link to a particular disambiguated definition within wiktionary:depression, but if this is possible, it should be done first, and in preference to simply removing links altogether. If the article and redlinks were removed, I'm sure the problem would arise again with someone typing something like [[depression]] of blood pressure. I'll try doing more disambiguation now to confirm this. --Cedders^tk 09:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

another alternative might be to merge with Depression (kinesiology). However the resulting page cannot be called "depression (medicine)" as that would still be ambiguous. --Cedders^tk 10:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that you created this page just so that you could list it on the disambiguation page, which doesn't make a lot of sense. The purpose of a disambig page is to disambiguate the existing content on Wikipedia, not to find an article to link to for every possible meaning. If it were the latter, we'd never take any entries off of disambig pages.

I still think this page is unnecessary, for the reasons in my prod; it's just the definition of "depress" as applied to the human body. I'm not in love with depression (kinesiology) either, but at a glance it does seem to have a bit more justification for existence; I suppose because kinesiology is the science of body movement, and that article provides a finite list of what body parts can be moved in a specific way (at least, that's what I'm assuming the list is). Whereas this article could conceivably list every single substance in the human body, every system, every type of flow, all for no apparent purpose. If you know the general meaning of the word "depress", you can figure out that, say, a "depressed level of testosterone" means a lower level of testosterone without needing to look up the specific context of the word in an encyclopedia.

I'd still like to take the page to WP:AFD, but I thought it would be rude to do so without addressing your response here first. (I apologize for taking so long to do so.) Propaniac (talk) 13:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

For the record, no of course I wasn't saying that the page was created in order to be listed on the disambiguation page. I meant there were already links from article space to the disambiguation page (which should not happen). The process of disambiguation (which I do quite a bit of sometimes) is to change such links so that they go directly to the relevant article, rather than requiring readers to follow a link to a page where they have to do some work. Now if that particular meaning that some other editor has linked doesn't even appear on the disambiguation page and in fact there's no article written that might be a target, what do you do? The question is whether ambiguous links to depression referring this definition can or should (a) be left ambiguous; (b) be directed to a particular definition on wiktionary (preferred option if technically possible); (c) be removed; or (d) go to a landing page at least for the time being. I still don't think there's any possibility of linking to a particular definition on wiktionary. --Cedders^tk 15:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

@Cedders: Following up. The topic mostly remains a definition for a medical pathology term. Does this not violate WP:NOT?

Similar descriptive medical terms like hyper, restricted, elevation, suppression, are not indexed.

As mentioned by User:Propaniac, it is defined in Wiktionary. I understand there's a concern about being unable to link to a specific meaning from the disambiguation page. Could we instead just copy the definition to the disambiguation page without linking anywhere (similar to Had)? Looking through the inbound link text, there really aren't many other topics that require this page to exist.

depression (noun): (biology, physiology) A lowering, in particular a reduction in a particular biological variable or the function of an organ. - Wikmoz (talk) 20:45, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

It's tricky because there are various meanings of depression, including several within medicine and biology, so linking to any list of them might only further confuse a naive reader (eg CNS depression might be mistaken for depression of mood). It's not a term restricted to pathology (although OED definitions 1 [literal] and 5d [pathology] both cover; BTW it looks like I added that wiktionary definition shortly after the proposed deletion).

The concern is not with a disambiguation page, but with the possible use on pages like pharmacodynamics. That page similarly links to stimulation, which has more inward links and text but could likewise be seen as just a definition. There aren't many pages linking here[1], and at least one does so wrongly, but it's possible that other articles could be clarified by addition of such a link. If the article is deleted, those that link here should be cleaned up and clarified. I have little time for editing myself these days, nor expertise in the area, so I've tagged for Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine, and could ask there for suggestions as to how to make things as clear as possible. --Cedders^tk 15:06, 15 February 2020 (UTC)