Someone asked a similar question on a quick-take not too long ago.
I once gave up on a lot of my intellectual hobbies like chess and competitive programming due to depression. When I felt better I realized that I barely lost a beat on these hobbies . I do believe that cognition will be downstream of eating well, sleeping well, stress/anxiety reduction and solid relationships.
Here's an interesting paper. It found a high correlation between reductions in depressive symptoms and improvement from Mild Cognitive Impairment to normal cognition in older adults.
I highly recommend talking to a psychiatrist or therapist if you're not already.
Hello bodry, thank you for responding.
You say that cognition is downstream of numerous things, however some of them, particularly anxiety, seem to be influenced by cognition. I cannot talk to a psychiatrist or therapist because it is likely that they will treat the elimination of mental health issues as a terminal goal, and be willing to modify what I consider to be closer to my terminal goals as instrumental paths towards it.
I have suffered poor mental health for multiple years and noticed a decline in my fluid intelligence. In particular, my verbal proficiency has decreased: I was able to quickly formulate complex, gramatically correct, semantically coherent sentences which referred exactly to the ideas in my mind, using relatively few, well chosen words in the past, when speaking, and I could do so quickly without the use of meaningless place-holding sounds like 'um'. Now, I find that in order to do (not do) any of these things, I must sacrifice (accept) some of the others.
The verbal deficits are simply more salient/noticable/prominent than others, because I can hear myself speak and see what I type. This suggests that the others may be equally severe.
I am not at an age at which these effects are common in the absence of mental health problems.
How can I ( quickly ) slow this decline? If it can be stopped, how can it be stopped? If it can be reversed, how can it be reversed? Are there any drugs I could take which would have this effect? Please assume in your answer that the effects I believe are there are actually there. I believe that my brain is actually shrinking in certain critical areas.
Sorry if this post is inappropriate, I created it for primarily selfish reasons, although it may be helpful (or answers to it may be helpful) to others. I have created this post now because I believe the decline has accelerated sharply in the last months.