Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression • Hacker News Board

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#141

Post by iliketosleep » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

vrperson wrote: post #136

ytwySXpMbS wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my exact problem with all these studies. I thought "people who don't care about themselves eat unhealthily" was a bit of a no-brainer. I started a clinical psychology course on EdX recently and the first exercise was Common Advice. They went on the say the only useful common advice to give to a depressed person is to tell them to go for a run, as that was the only correlation supported by evidence. A RUN! Tha…

By that logic there is nothing useful you could say to a depressed person, as they won't get out of bed anyway. I am willing to believe that there are people who won't feel better by going for a run or will be unable to do so, but I think there are probably also people who feel better by simply doing it, even if they don't feel like it. Especially with depression there also seems to be an ideological battle, were som…

I can't even understand why there's an ideological battle. If you take a perfectly healthy person and put them into solitary confinement, there's a good chance they'll become depressed. It's an extreme example, but my point is that for most people depression is very much circumstantial. If the circumstances can be corrected and no serious trauma was experienced, the depression will probably go away. When cirsumstances cannot be changed or there's lasting trauma, medications are an option but outcomes are mixed..

There's a minority of people whom regardless of their circumstances will be depressed. In this case, the argument that a person's monoamine neurotransmitters levels (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine) are just naturally out of whack makes sense and medications might be the best option.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#142

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 12:20 PM UTC

nippoo wrote: post #104

I honestly think (for me, at least) the implied causation is the wrong way round here. When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. When I'm feeling great, I'm generally motivated to go outside / do DIY / read / have a lot less screen time. I initially spent lots of effort trying to reduce my screen time (parental controls, etc) before realising that it was proba…

I suppose its a negative feedback loop. Either way, cause and effect in psychology isn't always obvious. When society regards drug abuse as problem, whereas it stems from say troubled youth, then you get that kind of shifting the blame reasoning.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#143

Post by dr_dshiv » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

danenania wrote: post #140

bityard wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's not totally crazy. I suffer from mild chronic depression and I have noticed that doing my morning exercise routine makes it much more likely that my mood will be decent throughout the day than if I wake up and decide I just don't feel like exercising that day. I have also experimented on myself to see whether 30 minutes of exercise improved my mood in the middle of the day. Not totally surprisingly, it _usu…

For running/jogging, a good trick for when you really don't feel like it is to put running clothes on, go outside, and then just start walking. If you still don't feel like running, you can just go for a walk instead, but many people will actually want to run after a bit--the bottleneck is getting out the door. It's the same for other kinds of exercise. If you're dreading lifting weights, start by just doing some set…

Yes to this! Similarly, I got myself out of a rut by buying running shoes that didn't require socks. Totally pathetic, but that was my motivational block.

Re: Less screen time and more sleep critical for preventing depression

#144

Post by xncl » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #116

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I'm feeling sad, I tend to be unmotivated and liable to spend more time / all day on my phone. Switch "on my phone" with "drinking alcohol" and that's literally how all alcoholics think.

Ehh -- I'd just reconsider the 'literally all' part. There are alcoholics who just chase the feeling for itself -- a quick fix for sad thoughts, but not for all. It's a complicated disease, but some with issues crave booze regardless of how they're doing mentally. At least in my somewhat limited experience.

I am an alcoholic and for me it's more you replace any activities outside of work with drinking as a substitute for doing stuff. Later you realise you didn't just replace activities alcohol replaced people too. So in the end all I had to do was drink.