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If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

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191–200 of 301 posts

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife put her foot down eventually and told me she wasn't going to be able to live with me any more after too many verbal angry outbursts. I received an ADHD diagnosis as a child but was never treated. I lived with the extreme anger all my life and only recently sought treatment as an adult. Doing that was really hard after a lifetime of people telling me it was simply a matter of adjusting my attitude and that I b…

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

>But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

See? That's that shit - right there - that makes mental health so stigmatised that people won't seek help.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#192
post #13

Assuming a product person ( e.g Steve Jobs ) is easily Angry and Irritable with crap ( Which there are lots of it ), would that considered as depressed? Where do we draw a line where some body just have very high standard to everything ( Perfectionist ) or they actually have bipolar disorder.

This comment shows a fairly incomplete knowledge of the mental health spectrum. Not that I'm an expert myself, but I will weigh in with the knowledge I do have. "would that be considered depressed?" The article refers mostly to the absence of anger from the adult diagnosis of depression, and talks about how it may be valuable to include it. To be considered depressed, I would say that the individual would probably ha…

There's a pretty good consensus that Steve had obsessive compulsive personality disorder. It's different from OCD, and places a big emphasis on perfectionism. I believe his irritability and anger at people he worked with was due to his frustration of people not striving for perfection like he did.

I was diagnosed with OCPD a couple years ago, and after knowing all my symptoms and thinking about Steve's personality, it makes a lot of sense. The thing that sealed it for me? Steve struggled with food and eating disorders throughout his life. This is a common trait of people with OCPD and people struggling with perfectionism.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#193
post #28

The more you know about the world and tech especially, the more you will get depressed, IMO, maybe I'm wrong. Humans in general are pretty shitty, driven mostly by self-interest. I guess there are people driven by doing good but most people are capable of doing terrible things, especially when in a group. I do suffer from existential depression, I'm generally pretty happy, but as I learn more and live longer my outlo…

Your comment aligns with an old HN comment that I have saved that resonated with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16402387 I'd also recommend people feeling this way to read The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. It helped me.

The comment you linked concisely explains an idea I've "circled the drain" on for quite a while. Thank you.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If in her mind all of the anger was justified, why did she ever go looking for a doctor and a diagnosis?

Two things. What she says was the most motivating one is oddly prosaic. She is a veterinarian. She has loved animals her entire life, considers them her guardian angels. We had finally moved into a rental house that allowed pets, so we got a dog, an Australian Shepherd rescue dog who turned out to be the best dog who ever lived. I took her all the way through advanced obedience classes. I don't really have the words…

Happy you made it through all of this, but damn that sounds like a rough period.

(Postnatal depression might have made it even worse, vis-a-vis the baby).

Good that everything turned out fine! (Y)

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Humans in general are pretty shitty, driven mostly by self-interest. Water takes the path of least resistance, Humans take the path of least expected effort expenditure to accomplish their desires Both are just doing as nature does, being themselves. Why be sad that every person will do the least amount of work to satisfy their desires, when it is an inevitability, but your sadness is not.

Except we're supposed to be intelligent. Early on in my life I felt something, I never get angry at nature, no matter harmful, but disappointment by other beings hurts deeply. Nature doesn't pretend to choose, it just is. That made me a lot more at ease with objects than people.

One might consider it somewhat condescending but I find that I rarely have emotional reactions to people I don't know. Only people close to me, people whom I've come to have expectations, can bring out my emotional side. The rest, I chalk it up to forces of nature.

Terrorism? Force of nature. Someone being shitty on public transit? Force of nature. Littering? Force of nature.

We can change our environment though and that changes the genre of nature we see around us. So I concentrate on that.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#196
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more you know about the world and tech especially, the more you will get depressed, IMO, maybe I'm wrong. The problem is that you can't say that today -- depression has to be all about BS "chemical imbalances", and never about the sorry state of the world and/or people's personal affairs. Even something as simple as artificial light or enforced working hours, and commutes are nothing like people have evolved fo…

> The problem is that you can't say that today -- depression has to be all about BS "chemical imbalances" Really? I googled "what causes depression", first link: "It's often said that depression results from a chemical imbalance, but that figure of speech doesn't capture how complex the disease is. Research suggests that depression doesn't spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. R…

>Really? I googled "what causes depression", first link

So, even the first link agrees that "it's often said".

Now add how many times depression is treated immediately with drugs as a physiological disease of the individual.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is "over here" for you? The only place I've found which has wheat which doesn't make me feel icky is Italy. And the only thing I can figure out about it is fructans (they have a finicky milling process), which seems insane. I've been all over, and as I don't actually have celiac disease (but a very direct and obvious reaction to something in wheat; sleepy internal itchy feeling) I always try the local breads. U…

Finland. I sometimes try import foods, thinking I might discover the missing piece of the puzzle. I'll keep a look out for Italian!

Keep your eyes peeled for "doppio zero" flour. Seems to be the highest quality.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#198
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we're supposed to be intelligent. Early on in my life I felt something, I never get angry at nature, no matter harmful, but disappointment by other beings hurts deeply. Nature doesn't pretend to choose, it just is. That made me a lot more at ease with objects than people.

Intelligent and ethical are orthogonal categories. Intelligence does not stop greed, hate nor pleasure from mistreating others. They just makes such people more effective.

true, but I believe ethics is partially wired in us (except sociopaths and similar conditions), but it's a bit like a muscle

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#199
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

It would be nice if that analogy worked, but there is no psychological equivalent of antibiotics and although psychological and psychiatric treatments can be helpful, they often aren’t, and equally people actually do frequently recover from mental health issues without treatment.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#200
> irritability — a reduced control over one's temper that results in angry outbursts — is listed as a core symptom of depression for children and adolescents

There are a lot of "this is me" comments ITT. Can anyone touch on their experience of anger/temper as a result of depression in their children or even in themselves as a child? I didn't realize there was established research on depression symptoms in children. I always associated it with "sadness"/darkness and feelings of worthlessness that the [adult] mind can suffer.

I have two wonderful boys. The youngest always had a bit of a tendency to overreact/outburst on little things. For example he'll lose/die in a video game and just utterly lose his mind. Since my ex and I separated when he was 5 things have been the same and I never connected that it may be due to depression. Maybe he has been carrying this for a long time.

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