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Tips for the depressed

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Re: Tips for the depressed

#91

Post by ditonal »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #70
ditonal wrote: post #19

I largely agree with all the advice here. I dropped out of college due to depression, then I torched my tech career with a manic episode that led me straight from a FAANG SWE job to an involuntary psych ward patient for a month, which was followed by a half year brutal depression. I’ve done a lot of research and I think psychiatry is pseudoscience and antidepressants are largely placebo. I’m really on the mindfulness…

> I’ve done a lot of research and I think psychiatry is pseudoscience and antidepressants are largely placebo. Please don't spread anti-psychiatry misinformation online. I'm sorry that it didn't work for you, but please don't dissuade others from seeking proper treatment. Playing devil's advocate: Even if SSRIs are just placebo (they're definitely not, and we have decades of science to explain why that's a false stat…

Many people are upset I called antidepressant placebo. It’s obviously a huge discussion out of the scope of this thread. But keep in mind that companies make a ton of money selling SSRIs and _still_ have trouble differentiating results from placebo, despite arguable massive publication bias influenced by big pharm.

Furthermore the metrics for these things are the most subjective thing in the world, surveys of humans. Most statisticians consider that data very low value but it’s the foundation of modern psychiatry.

Placebo is great if it works, sure, but psych meds have a long list of side effects. It’s be better to get placebo healed by your local witch doctor than a medical doctor, if you’re just relying on placebo.

Again it’s a big discussion and of course I’m open minded to learning more but on the flip side a lot of people take modern psychiatry as infallible medicine despite a lot of flaws.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#92

Post by deft »

This is the first article on depression that didn't make me angry. Thank you. For some reason telling people time heals offends them. I only do it because I know from experience.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#93

Post by benevol »

A close friend of mine suffered from clinical depression for approximately 8 years and after all conventional medical approaches it was 1 dose of approximately 125 micrograms of LSD that solved that depression within minutes for several months completely. Obviously, he had to continue to work on the underlying issues as well so as not to fall into a negative cycle again.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#94

Post by jonahrd »

majos wrote: post #40

Related, but not exactly on topic: what do people make of the word “depressed”? I am unsure whether people use the word to mean “a deep lack of any enjoyment that persists for a long period of time (weeks?)” or something stronger, which adds on “ and whose source is not easily explained ”. In my head, depression means the latter, but I’m unsure what the popular conception is.

Here is a good book that largely discusses this: https://www.amazon.ca/Weariness-Self-Diagnosing-Depression-C...

Re: Tips for the depressed

#95

Post by agumonkey »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

One of the biggest force multipliers in overcoming depression is accepting that you can modulate your condition by taking small, deliberate actions. It's also one of the most difficult and delicate ideas to communicate to a depressed person. Depression notoriously clouds peoples' judgment and makes simple tasks seem impossible. Depression also encourages a lot of binary thinking, where people tend to give up because…

> Depression also encourages a lot of binary thinking, where people tend to give up because they can't achieve the optimal solution and can't imagine anything in between optimal and complete failure.

Definitely, it warps your perspective badly.. my conclusion is to never think over sadness. I'm sure we're mostly supposed to be hugging loved ones, walk or sleep.

> And most importantly, depressed people almost never want to hear someone else telling them that they should do something to change their own condition.

I'll add an exception. They/we do.. we just need someone we can relate to closely. To an absurd level even.. because whenever you can finally talk openly and feel someone gets you, the mental pain lessens rapidly.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#96

Post by bookofjoe »

sachdevap wrote: post #62
bookofjoe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... do something that's fun. There is NO fun in depression.

I know what you mean. I've been there. And yet, from my own experience and the little I have read, the bigger problem is that there is no anticipation of fun. Thinking of fun activities does not bring me joy when depressed. Doing them brings lesser joy, but there is still joy, however little.

No joy either.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#97

Post by dlsso »

WalterSear wrote: post #59
dlsso wrote: post #17

There's some good stuff here, but it completely skips gratitude. Focusing on what you're grateful for is one of the more powerful and best proven methods to combat depression. I've been through clinical depression and consider it the key to my recovery.

There's evidence to suggest that this isn't the case. https://news.osu.edu/gratitude-interventions-dont-help-with-...

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that gratitude is inversely correlated with depression, and a good amount that shows it to be useful as an intervention as well. Even the article that you provided as evidence to the contrary found positive effects, just not dramatically higher than placebo.

For example, here are the first couple pages of results I got for gratitude studies. Every single one found a positive affect.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/135910531557245...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144341090349393...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-014-9542-3

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-p...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00926...

https://synapse.koreamed.org/search.php?where=aview&id=10.12...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2015.10...

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-51687-001

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sjop.12252

Re: Tips for the depressed

#98

Post by agumonkey »

burntoutfire wrote: post #57
cgriswald wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, doing those small things did seem impossible and even when I managed to achieve it, I didn't feel the reward. There didn't seem any point in making the bed if I felt the same whether the bed was made or not. Eventually I reached a mental place where I could turn that around: If it doesn't make a difference in how I feel, why not make the bed? I had to more or less take it on faith that eventually the rewards…

Coincidentally, I really see no point in making the bed. I wonder if I'm depressed.

It can be laziness but I tend to see all these details as a sign of a tad too low mood.

It's a relativistic conclusion that, whenever I'm a bit happy, I tend to naturally care more about making beds, picking nicer clothes, etc

So I can accept that thinking not doing these can be a sign.

Re: Tips for the depressed

#99

Post by logjammin »

econcon wrote: post #26
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

One of the biggest force multipliers in overcoming depression is accepting that you can modulate your condition by taking small, deliberate actions. It's also one of the most difficult and delicate ideas to communicate to a depressed person. Depression notoriously clouds peoples' judgment and makes simple tasks seem impossible. Depression also encourages a lot of binary thinking, where people tend to give up because…

I used to workout 2 hours everyday in gym. When I stopped supplements, I couldn't get myself to lift for even 15 minutes. I lost all my stenght and got depressed.

Really? Which supplements?

Re: Tips for the depressed

#100

Post by downerending »

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #22

Someone here recommended David Burns' "The Feeling Good Handbook" and it was a very, very good read. I'm not going to say it turned my life around, but it taught me how to spot and disarm all kinds of cognitive distortions, defeat laziness, better align my expectations of others, assess my self worth positively... It's also well written, fast paced, and sometimes even funny. It includes lots of exercises that are pra…

I also really enjoyed this book, and he comes off as a really decent human being. Not sure how much of it has stuck, but one thing that did is the idea that my enjoyment/satisfaction of doing something is often far greater in retrospect than in prospect.

There is some thought, though, that the "cognitive" part of CBT isn't actually what matters. The line of thought is that the initial studies did both the cognitive and the behavioral, but that it was the behavioral part that produced more or less the entire result. It'll probably never be seriously studied further, since CBT is so popular, but it does suggest one core piece of advice: Doing something, almost anything, will probably make you feel better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_activation

Beyond that, someone suggested that simply accepting that depression will always be with you can help. It seems to have for me.

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