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

Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

med.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–339 of 339 posts

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#331

Post by Archien »

foobarian wrote: post #276
Archien wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thinking is slightly different in this case then yours: Ending it today will stop having to do x today, tomorrow and rest of my life. So it's not just the homework of the day. But due to my thinking I would also not just go without consuming my money and doing only what I want as long as possible as it also freed me from certain social boundaries. Like suicide is bad, you need to work, lifing as long as possible i…

My thinking was always comparing it to a crappy movie at a middle of nowhere theater. Sure the movie may be bad, but it still beats getting up and leaving.

How many bad movies you gonna watch until standing up and leaving becomes the better choice?

One problem might also be that in my opinion lifing as long as possible is not the right answer. I'm not life positive like independent how shitty your life is as long as you are alive is good.

Now the question arrives what is a good time to leave.having already seen and done more than any other human who lived 50 years ago already puts me ahead on a experience level .

So determine this answer is open for me to decide.

Not having kids and not planning some right now also makes me more 'flexible'

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#332

Post by webinvest »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #171
eru wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only it won't last and it will the "yeah, I guess I'm feeling better"-level of improvement. Who says it won't last? Most depressions actually do get better by themselves. How do you think humanity has survived so far? (Most, but not all. And even if it eventually gets better without meds, there was still a lot of suffering.)

It's quite possible humanity has survived because most people never get depressed. You need to be quite clear about definitions to have a meaningful conversation on this.

Unfortunately your genes don’t care about whether you’re happy or not beyond your gene’s needs for survival and reproduction.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#333

Post by ntSean »

vasco wrote: post #223
ntSean wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bias in who responds to surveys is complicated by the pandemic. Many people have lost family members and been pushed into poverty. It is incredibly callous to think mental health can be discretely measured without accounting for the environment. Suicide is not a quantitative measure of mental health.

> Suicide is not a quantitative measure of mental health. I'd say a population with high suicide rates is more afflicted by mental health issues than one with lower rates. What would you say?

No, it is down to policy and culture.

Simply put: I could purposely crash my car and it would not be counted as a suicide or homicide.

While there are a lot of reasons for that to be the case, my point is the numbers are not representative of our current position.

A more holistic approach measuring alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, social media sentiment, and workforce participation.

Unfortunately, all of which are indicating that the majority are collectively suffering.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#334

Post by avidiax »

nebula8804 wrote: post #305
avidiax wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buproprion is quite good at removing false reward loops. Made me really tone down video games. It's used also for smoking cessation. It's quite subtle. The other SSRI/SNRI meds have strong side-effects. I will say that the effect is permanent. It's rewiring your brain when you use it. If it's helping you to spend some time on harder but more important self-improvement, then great. If not, you should consider switchin…

>Buproprion is quite good at removing false reward loops. Made me really tone down video games. It's used also for smoking cessation. It's quite subtle. The other SSRI/SNRI meds have strong side-effects. That would be a miracle if it did that. My doctor put me on this precisely because it is less strong than other drugs like Adderal. He does not want me going down an addicting road unless necessary. (my summary of wh…

I took Wellbutrin for several months. As mentioned, the effects were subtle for me. The pill isn't going to do the work for you, just grease the wheels a bit. You should probably give it 3 months before quitting.

I'm currently on Adderall. If you have ADHD, it has more benefits than drawbacks in my opinion, and the effects are not as subtle. It does give you focus for tedious tasks, though it's up to you to assure that those tedious tasks are actually important and not a rabbit hole.

Neither drug is going to make you stop browsing Reddit or HN. If you want to reduce browsing Reddit, turn off all the default subs and then subscribe to specialized subs catered to real, specific interests of yours. You will not miss the default subs. HN is only good for about 1 page usually, then it's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

If you want to do more exercise/coding/tidying up/etc. set a 5 minute timer, do at least that much work on that, then reward yourself with some HN. You'll find that starting the activity is the hardest part.

Re: weight loss, you can't outrun your own fork. All the fad diets have a kernel of truth to them, a lesson to apply or discard in your own life. Intermittent fasting is quite effective IME. Besides calorie reduction, it also resets your hunger signals. For me, it got me over this irrational fear of being hungry that I had, and also revealed just how much I was eating out of boredom rather than hunger. Also, you have to pick a problem and focus on it. Mitigate the weight situation, but don't force yourself to fight a 2 or 3 front war.

If you have ADHD, you should be on an ADHD med, unless you literally can't trust yourself to take only one pill a day.

If you have treatment-resistant depression, you can also look into ketamine, either intravenous or now intra-nasal. Pay the price to have it administered professionally, as it's not a good idea to develop a black-market hookup for something so addictive.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#335

Post by birksherty »

xapata wrote: post #318
birksherty wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is full of small inconveniences and big ones time to time. It's not just one small one. So wanting to stop all that should not be considered illness, but forcing to continue the pain and trauma should be. Life is ultimately a meaningless thing, and most people suffer for it. Some people are privileged and they decide what is illness and what is not based on their own life. One has to work 9-5 whole life that slo…

You're just arguing the semantics of "illness". Call it atypical thought if you prefer.

Semantics changes everything here and that's how everyone perceives things.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#336

Post by [deleted] »

xapata wrote: post #317
birksherty wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is wanting to stop pain and trauma is illness and wanting to continue in more of that useless suffering is normal? I am not talking about privileged here but most people who struggle whole life in world.

Because if suicide were typical, humanity wouldn't exist. Mental illness is merely abnormality, not necessarily something ethically wrong or illogical given one's a priori beliefs.

[deleted]

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#337

Post by birksherty »

xapata wrote: post #317
birksherty wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is wanting to stop pain and trauma is illness and wanting to continue in more of that useless suffering is normal? I am not talking about privileged here but most people who struggle whole life in world.

Because if suicide were typical, humanity wouldn't exist. Mental illness is merely abnormality, not necessarily something ethically wrong or illogical given one's a priori beliefs.

> Mental illness is merely abnormality, not necessarily something ethically wrong or illogical given one's a priori beliefs.

I agree, but what you're saying is not how the world see it. Many things that make humans exists are not necessary or makes life difficult now anyway. Like phobias, vomiting while travelling by car, allergies etc.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#338

Post by eru »

webinvest wrote: post #332
lazyasciiart wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite possible humanity has survived because most people never get depressed. You need to be quite clear about definitions to have a meaningful conversation on this.

Unfortunately your genes don’t care about whether you’re happy or not beyond your gene’s needs for survival and reproduction.

Yes. And given the prevalence of continued prevalence of depression, there might be some evolutionary benefit for the genes that also cause depression.

No clue whether it's the depression itself, or whether that's just a side-effect of something else that's useful.

Re: Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

#339

Post by JamisonM »

ntSean wrote: post #187
JamisonM wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disentangling pandemic effects from "normal" life is complex but overall in the US suicide rates are actually down for 2020, though slightly increased for younger Americans. The trend in the US was upwards into 2019 so these are positive developments. It is very difficult to properly assess 2020-2021 survey data both because the "you should be depressed" messaging is very strong in the media and the bias in who respo…

> the bias in who responds to surveys is complicated by the pandemic. Many people have lost family members and been pushed into poverty. It is incredibly callous to think mental health can be discretely measured without accounting for the environment. Suicide is not a quantitative measure of mental health.

If the claim that "Suicide is not a quantitative measure of mental health" means that such large fluctuations in the suicide numbers across many jurisdictions with differing underlying rates can't be used to inform any opinions about the impacts of the pandemic on mental health then I emphatically disagree.

I don't know who said you can measure mental health without accounting for the environment, I never made that claim! I literally said "I don't think it is "safe to say" much of anything about suicide rates or individual motivations, it is a complex issue."

Post reply on HN