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Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

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Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#301

Post by hsn915 »

MisterMower wrote: post #222
TameAntelope wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The past two years opened a ton of eyes regarding the fallibility of the medical community. Turns out most doctors prescribe what is recommended by the professional organization they’re a member or the CDC. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at my daughter’s pediatrician’s office and the doctor either hands me a print out of the CDC website or actively googles something in front of me during a visit. Sometim…

I used to think the software industry was broken because seeing from the inside it's obvious that the vast majority of programmers have no idea what they are doing.

Then as I looked at the rest of the world, it started to become clear to me that all industries are broken in the same way. Medicine is no exception.

> My brother just got prescribed anti-depressants this week. All the doctor did was give him the standard DSM “are you depressed” test. His score was barely on the depressed spectrum and so the doctor gave the standard dose. “See you a month from now, call me if you feel like killing yourself.”

> No probing questions about why he might be depressed. No questions about past his past experiences with seasonal depression in Michigan where he lives. No other alternative remedies. Just a prescription, next patient please.

That's really sickening.

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#302

Post by weakfish »

renewiltord wrote: post #283
frankincense wrote: post #56

PLEASE do not read any of these people's advice. Talk to a MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, preferably a DOCTOR. DO NOT trust your mental health to strangers on the internet, be it reddit, or hacker news, or whatever. If you are based in the US and live nearby a university they usually have good counseling services and the infrastructure to refer people even if you're not attending the school. Search "{school} counseling servic…

Clueless comment. You don’t understand explore vs exploit. You are not qualified to give advice on the subject of whom to consult. Please do not try. Your advice is really bad.

This isn’t really a charitable response imo

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#303

Post by AitchEmArsey »

hu3 wrote: post #275
inter_netuser wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>superpower of being resilient against life's wraths. how?

Therapy changed the way I see life and toned down my expectations. I live less in the future and more in the present. I judge myself less and feel emotions more.

Can you give an example of how that improvement manifests itself in a bad situation?

Intellectually I am already well aware that my frame of mind is often the main issue and that I could simply choose not to be bothered by something - but that realization is a "system 2" thought which doesn't arrive until "system 1" has already derailed my whole day.

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#304

Post by rasengan0 »

There is a somatic component. Nature, forming new relationships (love) and social contact like dance can work wonders in conjunction with professional help. Breaking anhedonia and rumination was key. No chemical assistance needed unless that includes food as medicine. The DSM is not the bible and there are many ways to heal. Peace be with you.

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#305

Post by [deleted] »

zephyrthenoble wrote: post #250
danamit wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found strangers online to be more effective than doctors, simply because they read to much on the matter, then they interact too much with you. I basically got diagnosed online by 2 different people about 2 different issues, one is biological, and the other is mental. And they were right. This is nerds out there who read about topics constantly, way more than the average doctor, not even close. So a stranger can he…

This isn't a video game. Your sample size of one is not indicative of the greater population. Don't cause people to mess up their health by appealing to the notion that they can do better than trained medical professionals. This is dangerous.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#306

Post by grp000 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #287
grp000 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what you said at all. What you have down is this: "so we're at a point in the Internet where random people feel confident enough to tell others to disregard professional medical advice in favor of their own "research"" Which is in response to a post saying that they disagree with another parent who says that none of these anecdotal experiences or advice given by other posters should be read. Regardless, I…

You're playing with people's lives when you give them medical advice without being qualified to do so. If you trust a stranger's anecdotes on the Internet over your doctor (or even your own massively undereducated and biased interpretation of the situation), you are a fool, full stop. Unfortunately, sometimes the very disease you have causes you to make foolish decisions. The only sane answer here is to get help from…

You didn't even read what I wrote: "Regardless, I think it's important for people to trust their own judgement, and weigh anecdotal experiences and advice from regular people, with the understanding that all advice comes from a certain context."

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#307

Post by mind-blight »

My experiences with depression seem mostly environmental. I haven't tried medication, but I do know that when I'm hiking and dancing regularly, my depression goes away.

Dance in particular changed my life more than once. It's exercise, it's social, and partner dances give you a lot of physical touch, which is great for helping balance your brain. If you can find a class to commit to for a few weeks, that commitment really helps get me out the door if I'm feeling down or numb. Two one hour classes per week was enough to dramatically help.

The best part is that if it doesn't work for you like it did for me, you still have a new skill and new community that can support you while you keep looking for what does.

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#308

Post by gorgoiler »

Some great advice I was given, a few years ago:

Imagine you have a heart condition. It is treatable with some tried and tested keyhole surgery, but there’s another problem.

You were bitten by an insect and the bite became infected. You can’t go into surgery with a fever, but if you take some antibiotics then the infection will pass and you can get back on track for your surgery. The bite hurts a lot. An antihistamine cream will help.

One body. Three different problems with it, all linked together. The way your mind’a chemistry works, the way you think, and how you got there are three very similar things.

SSRIs are there to help bring you stability. They don’t make life magically better. That requires a lot of hard work on your mindset. Talking therapy (CBT) is the best place to start. It’s custom coaching to help you look to the future and move forward in life with tools to hold back the demons of anxiety and rumination.

When you have those two things under your belt — the bite stops hurting and the infection clears up — then you can turn around and look back on your past, with Analysis. Finding a good psychoanalyst is time consuming and expensive and not always even a necessary or desirable step. You can live with a heart condition if you accept that you are willing to drop your plans to climb Everest.

That’s the outline. Don’t be scared. Be brave and talk to a doctor*. They will help you with all of these steps.

*…or two, or more if you want to five-space-shuttle-computer-votes your medical care! I once took three eye tests in the same day because I was convinced opticians were quacks!

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#309

Post by selfmodruntime »

tomatowurst wrote: post #57
pasabagi wrote: post #47

> For these reasons I am completely shit-scared of them. I see them as my option of last resort but increasingly I feel my options running out. I was in the same boat. Don't listen to the haters. Anti-depressants are amazing. Most of the people who 'cured' their depression through some kind of cheap trick turn out to have been self-diagnosed. Anti-depressants, if dosed and chosen properly, have basically no side effe…

Dangerous advice. Anti-depressants are band-aid solutions. Depression isn't an imbalance of "chemicals", it has been marketed that way for decades to sell pills. As soon as you are off them, you will likely relapse back into depression. While it can help someone that is in immediate risk, it does not solve the core issue of what depression is which requires a holistic, non-conventional view that Western medicine shun…

> Depression isn't an imbalance of "chemicals", it has been marketed that way for decades to sell pills

Medical professionals have been finding that in cases of clinic chronic depression, the patients brain doesn't produce nearly enough endorphins compared to others. Also, antidepressants are from a time where we didn't yet produce problems to sell the solution and they have helped millions of patients.

But I guess you know something we don't?

Re: Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?

#310

Post by nigma1337 »

I personally am on anti-depressents currently. Side-effects haven't been bad at all, and I have felt a lot better. There are still bad days and such, but at least I also have good days.

Talk to a doctor you like/trust, see what they reccomend. The worst which can happen is it doesn't work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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