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

Daddy isn’t coming back

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 430 posts

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#151

Post by codingdave »

aerovistae wrote: post #35

Not a comment on the story itself, but rather on the postscript which follows it: > If you are struggling to cope or have been affected by anything in this story, please contact the Samaritans in the UK at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. More information at mind.org.uk, samaritans.org and save.org Years ago, unhappy but not suicidal, I decided to ca…

You were not suicidal. Not passively, definitely not actively. The needs of the actively suicidal are not the same as someone who is unhappy and just calling to check the experience. I don't know if you've ever been around someone who is actively suicidal, but it is a completely different state of mind than normal interactions. What they need is not a connection or a therapy session to talk them down - that comes later. They need help. That could be talking, but it could be figuring out whether to send an ambulance, law enforcement, whether someone is there who can restrain them from taking irrevocable actions, or to drive them to a hospital.

So yes, maybe you got someone who had no idea what to do with you. Maybe they did suck at that job. But you were applying the wrong tool to the problem. If you are unhappy, call a therapist. If you are suicidal, call a hotline.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#152

Post by MauranKilom »

woofcat wrote: post #50
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty harsh view. Let me try something else: the author notes that 6,000 people take their lives in the UK every year. That has a very substantial cost, potentially measurable in many ways, but let's measure it in dollars. The US EPA uses a value of about 7 million dollars for a statistical life in 2006 dollars [1], or about 10 million 2021 dollars [2]. The cost of suicide in the UK in the aggregate is some…

>Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose t…

> The gain is that the average mortality goes down by 0.001%.

What made you come up with that nonsensical figure? Suicide is the leading cause of death in males under 45 in the UK. [0] And here's another tidbit [1]:

> Eliminating suicide as a cause of death would have increased life expectancy at birth by 1.92 years for males and 1.36 years for females from 2011 to 2015 [in the US].

We can debate whether and how much reducing mortality helps society, but please don't pretend that suicide is in minor in the grand scheme of things.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31733510/

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#153

Post by rainonmoon »

GDC7 wrote: post #149

The fact that people in here are considering waiting to have a kid till they can self-diagnose themselves as mentally stable enough not to kill themselves, is itself an indicator that people who clicked on this HN thread are at higher risk for depression. Me included. The non-depressed person goes about the world as they owned it, thinking nothing but good things will come their way, they have the confidence to try h…

You'd probably find a lot to like in the book Lost Connections by Johann Hari. The main thrust is the impact society has had on mental health, in contradiction to the notion that depression is merely a "chemical imbalance".

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#154

Post by magnetowasright »

muuglay wrote: post #79

Suicide is a hard topic. My mom did it. I don't talk to my father. I might be autistic or have aspbergers, and I dont understand why I wake up. I'm a robot emulating a human. I have to do weed to grt any mystery of a cosmic connection because we are strange primates. I hate my job which causes a disease of more when even after excelling in a fang job making over seven figures, I feel very little joy. I just have hope…

I just wanted to be another voice suggesting therapy. I’m Autistic and I know it can be hard to find a professional who ‘gets’ Autism but finding one who did totally changed my life. It’s pretty standard advice to shop around for mental health professionals until you find one that really clicks with you but Autism/possible Autism is definitely an added complication. It really can be worth the effort. I hope things get better for you

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#155

Post by downut »

cyberpunk wrote: post #126
kreeben wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear myself in you. I went through some shit. But I have two kids and so I would never... Then I got a little better and those daily thoughts became weekly, then monthly and nowadays they are simply not there anymore. Well, sometimes they are but they are now very easily dismissed. I just came here to say that, if god forbid both your kids are taken from you, even then, I would say to you, fucking hell man, don't d…

I mean, I'm a buddhist.. So I'm kind of 'pro universe' but I don't see the point in unnecessary suffering. You're telling me you'd keep on going after losing your family? Years and years of pain and misery? What's the point? There are some things you don't get over.. And even the idea of 'getting over' something like that would make me even sadder than I would have been immediately? Sometimes, kill -9 seems to be a v…

Search string: life is suffering

People have been thinking on this very question since the beginning of people.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#156

Post by kzrdude »

AdamN wrote: post #37
valenaut wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by high/low compliance?

Meaning it's more acceptable to not comply with cultural standards: i.e. keep standard hours, have a job, not marry/have kids, or whatever else the standards of behavior are. I'm not convinced though that developing countries are actually lower compliance but that's what the OP means.

Clearly, there's a lot of variation inside a country too. I'm thinking urban vs. rural but you can probably point out more specific ways it differs.

Maybe it's even possible to think of this on a class level? Certain upper middle class societies being very strict about how you should organize your life to conform.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#157

Post by lordgroff »

skissane wrote: post #85
jstx1 wrote: post #9

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

I have a long history of suicidal thoughts, and I’ve even acted on them a few times when I was younger (albeit half-heartedly-if I’d been really serious about it I wouldn’t be here now.) I don’t know if that makes me “at high risk of suicide” but likely people like me are at greater risk than people who don’t have that history. And yet, having kids has actually made it easier for me to resist those thoughts. They hav…

I'm not even remotely suicidal, in fact I consider myself very lucky to not really understand it (in most circumstances).

But I do have mental health problems that are nonetheless treatable, but which I did NOT treat until having children. Seeing how obviously unfair my "crazy" was to them as small kids, not to mention the fear of passing some of these traits to them made me finally decide to get my shit together, hard as it was and sometimes still is.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#158

Post by mercy_dude »

jstx1 wrote: post #9

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

I disagree. For me and many people I know, a large part of my “unhappiness” was from obsession with work and work politics and other similar nuisances which led to sometimes unhealthy lifestyle and lack of meaning in life. A kid certainly changed that for me and there is nothing more important in my (and partners) life than spending time with them and making sure I bring the best in myself for the sake of them. In fact a lot of thoughts of self harm I used to have, I think of them largely my responsibility to keep them at bay and gradually they have become foreign to me once I realize it is my duty to keep myself in best shape for the sake of my child. My only regret is delaying having a kid and family. That said my well paid tech job definitely made it possible not to have to worry about food plans shelter and other basic needs for my child, something that not everyone is privileged to have.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#159

Post by chillwaves »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #138
totetsu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So socialized health care spending millions on a mentally disabled child who will never yield return on that investment is a danger to society?

Yes. It's well known that someone with, say, Down's syndrome may need a full time handler and is extremely unlikely to be a productive member of society (they'd need to be twice as productive, to make up for their handler). Many couples when informed of Down's risk choose to abort.

I would rather spend the resources to help that person than enable another sociopathic billionaire, who would be far more dangerous to society.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#160

Post by s1artibartfast »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #142
paxys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single hotline experience not working for you doesn't warrant a blanket "I would never suggest to anyone to call a suicide hotline". There are lots of studies that show that such programs are at least moderately effective ( https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12... )

There's also studies that show the more times you are committed the more likely you are to commit suicide, i.e., that psychiatric hospitals cause suicidal ideation.

Would love to see the methodology on this. I wonder how they controlled for the cofounders are addressed. it stands that more seriously distressed people are committed more.

It is like saying that the more times you are hospitalized for illness, the more likely you are to die.

Post reply on HN