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When You Are Depressed, Make Something

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Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#211

Post by [deleted] »

lightedman wrote: post #148
jdietrich wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is advice for sadness, not depression. This is the opening quote in the article: "Sadness is when you feel down because things aren’t going your way. Depression is when you feel down even when all is going well." There's no mention of that in the DSM or the ICD. People with miserable lives can still be depressed; people can have miserable lives without recognising that their lives are miserable. There is no suc…

"There's no mention of that in the DSM" The DSM changes so often that I wouldn't really rely upon it for a definition.

[deleted]

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#212

Post by rapfaria »

cpncrunch wrote: post #184
komali2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree with you. I believe you are describing solutions to problems that can make someone sad or frustrated, which is a fine thing. I'm all about being real about your life situation and doing something about it. However, depression is a disease independent of external factors. I had it when I had arguably one of the coolest jobs in my life up until that point. I treated it with medication, got out of…

>Those techniques are what you called "short term solutions." I think of them as long-term preventative measures to stave off the chemical imbalance that can cause depression What causes the chemical imbalances? Research on animals show that chronic stress causes depression, so it definitely can be caused by external factors. If your job is causing chronic stress then changing job is obviously a plausible cure for yo…

Not really a cure, but a necessity. You still need treatment.

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#213

Post by [deleted] »

lightedman wrote: post #148
jdietrich wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is advice for sadness, not depression. This is the opening quote in the article: "Sadness is when you feel down because things aren’t going your way. Depression is when you feel down even when all is going well." There's no mention of that in the DSM or the ICD. People with miserable lives can still be depressed; people can have miserable lives without recognising that their lives are miserable. There is no suc…

"There's no mention of that in the DSM" The DSM changes so often that I wouldn't really rely upon it for a definition.

[deleted]

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#214

Post by Bartweiss »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #158
Bartweiss wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird divide here. Some people find the innate ability mindset oppressive and saddening, and are greatly comforted by "you can do whatever you set yourself to!" Other people find growth mindset oppressive, and greatly prefer "you can't be the next Gauss, so stop feeling bad about his achievements!" None of which is a strictly relevant to what's true , of course. The answer there seems to be "lots of skill i…

to me it's more that everybody is born with a certain set of multipliers, say the "average" human has 1.0 everywhere, to reach competency level X you need Y * 1,000 hours. You can be born super lucky to get, say, a 100 multiplier in playing the oboe, you will be considered "gifted" and you will rush past your peers, however all you have is a multiplier, if you put in 100 hours and somebody with a 1 multiplier puts in…

This is a great model - honestly it's much closer to my intuitive sense than what I wrote up.

I think most people can be decent at most things, certainly. Humans are (almost always) normally distributed, and odds are you're between 0.5 and 2 on most scales. If you want to run a 5k, or play guitar for fun, or make a website, your multiplier probably won't stop you.

But if you want to be the best, or you're choosing a goal where demand is short (astronauts, professional tubists, etc), you'd better think about your multiplier. There's a reason music schools are so viciously selective, and it's that hard work isn't going to get you a career unless you're somewhere up in that 100+ territory.

I'm pretty sure I'm down around .1 for music. I'm fairly tone deaf, my sense of rhythm is crappy, and I've never found any part of music intuitive. I've played some instruments, I don't regret it, but I'm certainly not going to go stake much of my time on being even middling-competent.

You touch on one thing that I think is a huge deal - people with big multipliers don't necessarily feel it. That top-notch musician knows they worked their ass off, but can't experience how they would have done with a worse multiplier. It's like listening to successful founders say that you should just focus on your idea and "it'll all work out in the end" - that's sample bias like no other.

I didn't get really skeptical about pure effort and growth mindset until I started working out how specific people learn. The gulfs in effort for different people on the same achievement are shocking, and this model is far better for understanding that.

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#216

Post by samirillian »

jackpirate wrote: post #195
ZeroFries wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- However, depression is a disease independent of external factors. What? No disease is independent of external factors. You even list a bunch of things which affect it. Depression is a pattern, subject to countless factors. I think what you mean to say is, there isn't a single cause of depression, and it can manifest when many of the factors affecting it seem to be "pretty good", and it can not manifest when those f…

>What? No disease is independent of external factors. This statement is true only in the narrowest sense and is actively harmful to people with mental health issues. Let's compare depression and cancer to see why. It is common to say something like "cancer is independent of external factors" to mean that anyone can get cancer. It doesn't matter how healthy of a lifestyle you live. Due to random chance, the guy who re…

> true only in the narrowest sense

I think it's true in the right-width-of-sense. Illnesses like depression are difficult because they certainly _do_ lie somewhere closer to the symptom side of the "symptom-disease" spectrum than cancer.

Alcoholism is good for comparison, because it presumably falls even further towards the "symptom" side of the spectrum. But there is certainly a spectrum!

So we have Cancer which is mostly-disease and Alcoholism which is mostly-symptom, and Depression which is somewhere in between.

The fact that these complications lead to weird moral baggage (socially-derived feelings of guilt, etc.) is completely separate from a good analysis of the situation. Depression and cancer are just very different phenomena.

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#217

Post by cpncrunch »

rapfaria wrote: post #212
cpncrunch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those techniques are what you called "short term solutions." I think of them as long-term preventative measures to stave off the chemical imbalance that can cause depression What causes the chemical imbalances? Research on animals show that chronic stress causes depression, so it definitely can be caused by external factors. If your job is causing chronic stress then changing job is obviously a plausible cure for yo…

Not really a cure, but a necessity. You still need treatment.

It depends. My own depression was completely cured by lifestyle changes, as was my wife's (different causes for each, but mostly related to jobs).

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#218

Post by icc97 »

KeytarHero wrote: post #72
paulpauper wrote: post #14

The problem with trying to create something is once you begin to work hard at it, you realize that you're not very good and others have done it far better than you. I have notice this a lot with math.I will work on a problem and then a Google search later reveals that the problem is not only completely solved but in a way that is far better than I could have ever conceived. Another problem is when you run out of idea…

Yeah, creativity is hard. As Ira Glass put it: > All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. (full quote: https://www.good…

I've run across this quote a few times recently and like it a lot. But there's always the nagging doubt / imposter syndrome telling that you don't really have taste either.

Like the people who can taste good food, can't necessarily cook good food.

Perhaps it's just enough that you care about something and want to get good at it.

I liked Sal Khan's TED lecture [0] about the possibility of us all having the capacity to be cancer researchers in the same vein that people 200 years ago assumed that only the best would be able to read.

  [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTRxRO5SRA

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#219

Post by yellowapple »

cpncrunch wrote: post #178
yellowapple wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no mention of that in the DSM or the ICD." Maybe not in those words, but the DSM does appear to distinguish between a depressive episode and e.g. bereavement: http://www.mental-health-today.com/dep/dsm.htm (I don't think this is the actual text, but it's the best I can find without a copy of the DSM-IV-TR on hand). IANAPsychologist, but as an ordinary person, the article's distinction between sadness and dep…

Having a crappy job or psychotic boss is more long-term than an "episode" such as bereavement, and definitely can lead to depression.

Perhaps. This is probably why I ain't a psychologist :)

The definition linked above does seem to generally imply (and in some cases explicitly state) that depressive episode/disorder symptoms better explained by some other diagnosis or situation (like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) should be taken as further symptoms of that disorder/situation rather than a separate diagnosis of MDE/MDD. I guess the question is whether or not symptoms induced primarily by external stimuli (as opposed to when the symptoms are expressed as irrational thoughts regardless of external stimuli) ought to be under a similar banner of "these are symptoms of $SOME_OTHER_CONDITION rather than depression". My (again: non-professional) opinion leans in favor of "yes" being the answer, since it likely has different treatment implications (remove patient from symptom-causing stimuli v. prescribe cognitive behavioral therapy and/or medication to patient), but that's the thing about brains: nobody really understands how the brain (and thus the mind) works, and thus it's unclear whether or not such a distinction would actually be useful.

Re: When You Are Depressed, Make Something

#220

Post by curun1r »

pc86 wrote: post #171
curun1r wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of thinking that has, in the past, led me to being depressed. It promotes an unhealthy fixation with the future that sends me into a nihilistic, self-perpetuating spiral of inaction. My answer has been something closer to Buddhist thinking than western religions. It's an intense effort to focus on the current moment. The past is done and cannot be changed. The future will happen, but it's largely bey…

Depression is a chemical or structural issue in the brain. Having existential thoughts did not change the structure of your brain or alter its chemistry. Suggesting you can "lead yourself" to depression by simply thinking is just as wrong as suggesting those with real depression can just "snap out of it."

I've had a diagnosed depression that I treated for many years with medication. And that course of treatment prolonged my illness and didn't ultimately work. What did work was to alter the way that I thought in the way I described above. And I'm not alone...research has shown that CBT and mindfulness training can be more effective than medication in treating depression.

The view that depression has only biological causes is dangerously naive, if not flat out wrong. Depression absolutely can be caused by unhealthy thought patterns.

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