> You weren't gaslighted. That's not what that word means.

Gaslighting is a form of personal attack that's designed to make someone doubt the validity of their own senses or personal experience. The reason I took yellowapple's comment as gaslighting is that he was calling into question the existence of a large body of research that shows up with even the most trivial Google search. If you don't buy into the cytokine theory of depression or think that my summary of the theory/research was false or whatever then that's fine. But by implicitly claiming that the research itself doesn't exist and is just something I invented, then at point I take it as a personal attack.

> The former is far from factual, and it's dead wrong to claim it matter-of-factly.

This 2008 paper is already one of the most cited journal articles on depression of all time:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2919277/

"It has been established that pro-inflammatory cytokines induce not only symptoms of sickness, but also true major depressive disorders in physically ill patients with no previous history of mental disorders. Some of the mechanisms that might be responsible for inflammation-mediated sickness and depression have now been elucidated."

"A role for cytokines in depression was first proposed by Smith in the form of the ‘macrophage theory of depression’ and further studied by Maes in the early 1990s. [...] Despite its originality, especially at a time when depression was thought to be associated with decreased rather than increased immunity, this hypothesis failed to attract the interest of the psychiatry community. Because biomarkers of inflammation in clinically depressed patients are not always elevated, the postulate that common pathophysiological mechanisms link depression to inflammation was limited. Other key components that would support this postulate were also missing, such as a demonstration that stimulation of the immune system induces depression-like disorders; identification of a possible common pathophysiological mechanism between the effects of cytokines in the brain and the neurobiological basis of depression; and proof that decreasing the inflammatory response attenuates symptoms of depression. As discussed below, research in this field has now supplied these key components."

"A growing amount of clinical data point to the importance of the relationship between inflammation and depression in physically ill patients and in conditions that are associated with increased activity of the innate immune system, including ageing and obesity. For instance, the prevalence of co-morbid depression in patients with coronary heart disease, a disease in which inflammation is now recognized as a major contributing factor, is three times higher than in the general population."

"A growing amount of clinical data point to the importance of the relationship between inflammation and depression in physically ill patients and in conditions that are associated with increased activity of the innate immune system, including ageing and obesity. For instance, the prevalence of co-morbid depression in patients with coronary heart disease, a disease in which inflammation is now recognized as a major contributing factor, is three times higher than in the general population."

In order to say definitively that inflammation causes depression there is a lot of stuff we'd need to know that we don't currently know. However, in order for it not to be true, there is a lot of stuff that would need to be false that we know is true. That's why I don't think it's inappropriate to claim it matter-of-factly, even though there are still a lot of missing details that need to be filled in.