Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 227 posts

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#171

Post by lgvld »

throwaway4good wrote: post #162

Various forms of lockdowns + extensive work from home + november => a wave of depression at the scale of two unsurpressed hacker news threads! Question is what can we do? Without resorting to therapists and pills ... Maybe the first thing is to have a bit humour and perspective about it - reminding ourselves that this too shall pass. Here is a German lock yourselves at home government propaganda piece for your entert…

OK thanks for the video. ;-) At first it really sounded like plain propaganda, but actually... it’s quite funny. Way less dramatic that any other covid movie I’ve seen. Well played, I guess. Communication is a key, if you want to gain (some) acceptance from people.

What youngsters particulary don’t want is being frown upon and treated like irresponsible kids -- and this video contains enough humour to make the point, without sounding dumb and patronizing.

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#172

Post by Spoom »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #88
tbenst wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a kind and thoughtful reply. I would push back on the notion that there has to be a cause for depression. Maybe there is, but it can lead to the dangerous conclusion that it’s somehow one’s fault, when it’s actually a maladaptive behavioral state; a disease. Fully agree with your advice to talk to a professional.

Thanks. I see how that could be a concern. To address it, there can be causality without fault. Fault is a kind of blame. Blame is when you take out a timeline and put your finger down on an arbitrary part and say, "It's because of this." and fault is taking that arbitrary point and reducing the event down into actors by saying, "It's because of you everything went wrong." Looking closely, fault provides no benefit.…

There are scenarios where there is not a clear cause that is within the person's control. Granted, I think your suggestions are great places to start, and helpful for many. That said, some cases of depression cannot be effectively treated without therapy or medication, and I think it's a bit... incomplete to suggest otherwise.

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#175

Post by throwaway4good »

kzrdude wrote: post #165
throwaway4good wrote: post #162

Various forms of lockdowns + extensive work from home + november => a wave of depression at the scale of two unsurpressed hacker news threads! Question is what can we do? Without resorting to therapists and pills ... Maybe the first thing is to have a bit humour and perspective about it - reminding ourselves that this too shall pass. Here is a German lock yourselves at home government propaganda piece for your entert…

I'm trying to sleep better (not going so well), sleep deprivation is a simple but important thing that can trigger a vicious cycle for me.

I don't know your situation.

But one of the things you get from a normal job is a regular schedule.

If you start working from home you can all of sudden let go of that schedule. Working at odd hours, only being tied down by a few online meetings.

The trick is of course recognising what has happened and then find of way of recreating the missing bits: I.e. forcing a 9-5 schedule on your work even if you don't have to.

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#177

Post by throwaway1723 »

hirako2000 wrote: post #158
throwaway1723 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not depression, it's the society tumbling down the hill straight to hell, my friend, and your subconscious understanding of that fact.

Thanks for pointing this out. It can be society as a whole, or simply the situation we end up in, individually. Or even both, in which case it would rather be surprising and in a way symtomtic of mental illness to NOT suffer from depression. One thing interesting about society and its effect on individuals mental state, is it the absolute rating of a society's sanity (however we could rate that) or rather the delta b…

Everyone's detectors of this delta seem to have different thresholds of sensitivity... Simply put, some frogs feel small increments of water's temperature and try to warn others, so that they work out the means of escape instead of keeping their pool party going, but for those partying the increments pass as not alarming.

That of course does not mean that less sensitive ones don't feel some uneasiness in the environment. They do, but the cook keeps dressing the heating broth with promises of better future, and lulls the frogs into attributing this uneasiness to depression. Because you see, psychiatry is just another cook's tool among forks, spoons and knives.

Erich Fromm did not use the term 'punitive psychiatry' for no reason.

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#178

Post by tomsi »

There are a lot great comments, tips and tricks in here to help you cope. The only thing I’d recommend that I didn’t see here is to read this small book: The untethered soul by Michael Singer It teaches you how to disconnect your Self from your thoughts and emotions and instead just to observe them. I found it a great read whether one is depressed or not.

Re: Poll: Have you experienced depressive symptoms over the past two weeks?

#180

Post by ineedasername »

danieltillett wrote: post #150
damnencryption wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few members in my distant family died in the last few months. One of whom I was close with (grandparent) but it barely affected me negatively yet I had been forced into shell for months due to otherwise small things in the past. It's not the severity of the outcome. I recovered faster from those. I require medicine when that happens and the triggers are always small non obvious. Please don't judge people based on t…

I guess I am an optimist by nature and I certainly prefer to look at the positive rather than the negative. I am not sure it is helpful for most people to focus on the negatives in their lives rather than the positive. I have yet to see anyone’s life improved by brooding on what is wrong rather than what is right. I wasn’t actually judging anyone’s situation, just questioning how we have got to the situation where 2/…

how we have got to the situation where 2/3rd of the people answering the poll claim to be clinically depressed.

Well, they might not be claiming clinical depression, which technically would require a clinician to render a diagnosis. Though many people may also not understand that distinction.

As for the large number, it may simply be that people who see the title of the post & aren't depressed just say to themselves in a slit second "nope not relevant to me, not clicking on it". In that case, most of the people who answered "yes" to depression were self-selecting as people for whom it was already relevant, i.e., people experiencing what they consider depression.

It's a problem with surveys in general. I hate doing surveys, but a huge portion of my job is data analysis, and most people are bad at creating surveys especially the design of individual questions. But the initial problem is "How do I get a representative sample when people that choose to do the survey may not be the same as people that won't". There's ways to minimize that effect, none of them great-- look at the the presidential polls as an example.

Post reply on HN