Depression lies

Studies have shown the two to have the same effectiveness rate at treating depression, around 50%.

It turns out it is actually healthy to pass the blame. I'd suggest reading one of Seligman's other books, Learned Optimism, for more, but in studies of people in high-pressure situations (freshman year at Army, cold call insurance salesman at MetLife, etc), the most successful people are the ones who externalize (blame others for) negative events and internalize (credit themselves for) positive events. It may not be an accurate view of the world, but then again, depressed people score higher on assessing the world accurately than non-depressed people, so it's not clear seeing the world accurately is that helpful.

When bad things happen to me I make a concerted effort to blame other people or one-off events ("the company I was interviewing at went through a reorganization or promoted an internal person/it was just bad luck they asked about the same origin policy/whatever"), and when good things happen to me I credit myself ("I got the job because I'm smart, I work hard, and people like being around me.") When I say it like that it sounds a little silly, but so is not making moves in your career or your personal life that clearly make sense, because you don't think you're good enough.

Like anything, CBT takes practice. Eventually you want to get to the point where you do the recognition and disputation automatically, like tying your shoes or typing the letter 'e'.

I wrote more about it here: http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/lectures-for-basketball-coaches...

luriel, you added considerably to your post since I first replied, and I feel like it now merits a different response. I agree with almost everything you've said, but feel like your criticism is misdirected and may do more harm than good.

Knowing you have a psychological issue is like knowing your application is crashing for some customers. You might have only vague guesses as to what the triggers are, and no understanding of what's actually going on or how to fix it. But now you are in a position to assess the cost and allocate resources to fix the problem. Maybe it will take years of man-hours (in either case) to handle the problem, but now you have a place to start.

I don't think Wil was telling people to take medicine; I certainly wasn't. The only thing I'd like to emphasize is that Depression is a problem that can be addressed. Don't ignore it. If you have a problem with Depression, do your research; find out what helps, and what doesn't. Stop treating your mental state like it's an immutable part of your environment: change your environment and your behaviors as you discover what you need to be healthier.

"Changes to your environment" might include drugs, and even they don't work over the long term, they might temporarily be enough of a lifeline to help you get to a point where you can start hacking at the problem in other ways. Doctors can be helpful guides on this path; sometimes they're not helpful, but in aggregate, I believe they help more than they hurt. Scaring people away from seeing a doctor by telling them that they'll be locked up in a kafkian institution against their will is liable to prevent people from getting help. Of course this has happened, and continues to happen, but it's rare. I think a much more common (and in aggregate, more serious) mode of failure is people's belief that the doctor is in charge of curing them---that the drugs are all it takes---and that they can't or don't need to work on themselves.

TLDR: Take Your Meds. Most people will miss this part of the story.

Thank you for the reminder of the gift. Sometimes I also consider working to delay the extinction of humanity to be a good reason. Joy would be, and is for some.

I just requested the Myth of Sisyphus from the library. If you haven't read it, you might try Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

--Cronopio cronopio cronopio.

May your solitude be less embittered.

>This is something that frightens me. What is a "diagnosable mental disorder"? I'm willing to bet this statement was far from true 50 or a 100 years ago. Not because I think people got more depressed or anxious, but rather because we're looking harder to "diagnose" things.

Eh, 50-100 years ago, we couldn't do anything about it, so why bother? now we can do something about it, and I think that's a good thing.

> I also never considered that I may have/have had ADD now/as a kid but now people tell me I should "get that checked out" all the time.

Really? in America? Generally speaking, telling someone else they should see a mental health professional is considered extremely rude, especially for something that is obviously not life-threatening (for instance, ADD. Irritating, but unlikely to kill you.) I mean, that's considered rude in the same way telling someone that they need to lose weight is rude; yeah, it might be true, and eh, the person might even need to hear it, but unless you are the person's doctor or you are /very/ close, it's a very rude thing to say.

(note, though, if you do suffer from ADD... I can plot income when I am treated and when I am not treated? the objective difference is... dramatic. Of course, side effects are unpleasant, but the difference is so dramatic I can usually get away with 6 months on, get a lot done, then coast for the next 6-12 months.)