We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#101

Post by DanBC » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 11:49 AM UTC

alan_cx wrote: post #60

jay-pinkman wrote: post #37

not all cases of depression can be attributed to unbalanced brain chemistry. sometimes the chemistry is ok, it's just your life is fucked. in this case depression is a normal reaction. you just can't remain all cheerful when you're drowning in shit. i don't think taking up meds or doing other things to cover it up is a good answer to such situations. with all its negative aspects depression is also a big reminder tha…

Why is this voted down? It's a valid opinion. Please tell me we don't have depression Nazis who can only accept one narrow definition of depression. What I see described here is possible how most people experience depression. Or does only extreme depression count?

Depression is a jargon term with a specific meaning, as well as an everyday word with a fuzzy less specific meaning. That causes some confusion in discussions like this.

Depression covers a range of different illnesses, with different severities.

Depression is not a normal reaction to a life event.

When someone dies you feel grief. That grief may be severe. But grief is a normal reaction to death. If, however, the grief is overwhelming and lasts for years, and interferes with your life then it has developed into depression. Depression is an abnormal reaction to life events.

There is a form of depression termed "reactive depression". Something happens, and a person doesn't have a normal negative reaction but has an abnormal extreme negative reaction and falls into depression. The main treatment for that would be to correct the thing that caused the reaction, with some CBT, and medication if needed.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#102

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 11:51 AM UTC

Buzaga wrote: post #76

erikpukinskis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The clinical tests are easy to find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64063/

a numbered list? sad joke...

Otherwise commonly referred to as a "summary". You may have heard of it.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#103

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 11:56 AM UTC

Buzaga wrote: post #81

DanBC wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are speaking to someone who claims that psychiatrists are responsible for the holocaust, pearl harbour, etc etc.

straw-man, ad hominem One thing is clear to me, discussing psychiatry is already a MAJOR TABOO... e.g.: in the article the dude says how he "thinks it has something to do with chemistry... and stuff" clearly in a not-so-scientific reasoning(not that all must be) but just pointing out this sort of questionings leads to major downvoting

Scientology is absurd. You'll have to forgive me if someone such as myself, who suffers from depression, don't find that the assertions made by a cult to be something I take very seriously.

By all means, criticize psychiatry. However, I've not seen anything substantive raised in any of the discussions in any of the threads so far.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#104

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 11:58 AM UTC

alan_cx wrote: post #60

jay-pinkman wrote: post #37

not all cases of depression can be attributed to unbalanced brain chemistry. sometimes the chemistry is ok, it's just your life is fucked. in this case depression is a normal reaction. you just can't remain all cheerful when you're drowning in shit. i don't think taking up meds or doing other things to cover it up is a good answer to such situations. with all its negative aspects depression is also a big reminder tha…

Why is this voted down? It's a valid opinion. Please tell me we don't have depression Nazis who can only accept one narrow definition of depression. What I see described here is possible how most people experience depression. Or does only extreme depression count?

[deleted]

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#105

Post by iSnow » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 12:21 PM UTC

Chattered wrote: post #94

austenallred wrote: post #23

Thank you, Mark, for writing this. I have lost three close friends in the past three months to depression. Their deaths were so similar it was shocking; they were all among the most brilliant people I had known, and all had been suffering from depression almost their entire lives. At the funeral of the one who was closest to me, another girl told a story of how on one day when his depression was particularly bad, he…

> Sorry for getting so personal, but I simply can't take any of the comments that say "just get over it." Depression is as real and as disabling as being paralyzed; it may not happen to everyone, but to say things like, "You need to be stronger" are no more appropriate to the depressed than they are to the paralyzed. The difference is that it is not always possible to talk someone out of paralysis, but I'd like to th…

>The difference is that it is not always possible to talk someone out of paralysis, but I'd like to think it is possible to talk some people out of depression.

Nope.

Best thing you can do is have their backs covered and stand by for emergencies while they untangle themselves from depression. Oh yeah, and cover your own ass, depression is contagious.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#106

Post by Deestan » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 12:24 PM UTC

imperio59 wrote: post #3

Where are the clinical tests for depression? The diagnosis is solely based on the opinion of the practitioner, there is no brain scan or chemical test that can conclusively prove that someone is suffering from depression. The so called "drugs" used to treat depression are no better, they "are thought to work" (big pharma phrases it this way in their own TV ads) by re-balancing the brain's chemistry, but in actual fac…

You are demanding more empiricism while simultaneously abusing existing empiricism.

> narcotics that have FDA black warning label that say right on the box that they increase the risk of suicide

The label says the suicide rate among people who have taken these pills are larger than the population in general. It does in no way mean the pills increase the risk of suicide. Interpret this in the context of these pills being given to people who already have suicidal tendencies, and it's much less scary.

This is empirical knowledge that by law must be on all forms of medication. If you are testing a salt water + lemon juice + cinnamon capsule as treatment for high blood pressure, and one of your test subjects gets hospitalized for severe food poisoning from eating shitty take away during the test, and this causes their liver to give out, the pamphlet describing your lemon cinnamon capsules is going to say "very low risk of acute liver failure".

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#107

Post by pvnick » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 12:35 PM UTC

lusr wrote: post #69

andreasklinger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the comparison to being paralysed. Being "mentally paralysed" is actually a good description.

And even if you move past the paralysis, trying to cure oneself of depression is like trying to debug the operating system of your mind using a debugger running the exact same flawed logic that you're trying to debug! Worse, those bugs are live and their nature is to slowly but surely corrupt the rest of the system software pertaining to beliefs, memory, perception and thought processing. Eventually you reach a point…

I just wanted to reply to give another endorsement to David Burns' Feeling Good (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808...) - I personally use the Feeling Good Handbook (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281326) which is the exact same thing but a little condensed. It's a big book which can be hard to tackle with depression.

Guys, if you're suffering from depression or anxiety, this is the be all and end all of lasting treatments that works. I actually Ctrl-F'ed for it when I opened this thread.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#108

Post by Tichy » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 12:49 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #96

Tichy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you go along that line of argumentation, it would be nice to link to actual articles and studies, rather than the homepage of some organization. Otherwise it is just a "call to authority", and we know those were never wrong in the course of history, right? For starters, what do they even measure to estimate effectiveness? Suicide rates? Happyness induced from a questionaire? Brainwaves? Hormone levels? Wha…

> it would be nice to link to actual articles and studies, rather than the homepage of some organization. These organisations link to their papers, and to the original studies. > What does effective even mean? Does it mean the patient did not induce further costs for the health industry? It could mean all sorts of things. For example chaining a patient to a bed could also be very effective in preventing suicide. So i…

Why bother even linking to the homepage, why not just link to Google? Why even discuss at all? Everything can be proved with Google...

As for my question about which aspects they even measured: interesting would be of course YOUR aspects, which led you to your conclusion. Otherwise, the same holds: perhaps I believe you that method X is very successful, but really you only said "chaining people to beds is very successful in preventing suicides".

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#109

Post by G5ANDY » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #97

lhnz wrote: post #58

A lot of uniformed people in this thread. You can't generalise as much as you all do. You have to understand that people experience life in very different ways. I have experienced depression [0] but I can't speak for anybody else other than to say I know it's hard and keep on . The real problem with depression is that everybody wants to wash their hands of it. "There are doctors that we can pass these sick people to.…

I didn't downvote you. > Go for CBT and you'll find it largely amounts to filling out forms on your mental state with tickboxes that don't really apply to you, while somebody tries to find out ways that your thinking is twisted. This is a poor version of CBT. Any practitioner providing CBT like this is doing it wrong. CBT is not about telling you that you are wrong or that your thinking is twisted. CBT is about explo…

Unfortunately, as it is practiced, this IS what CBT ends up being a good deal of the time. CBT has an implicit, and sometimes explicit, mechanistic view of human nature. This can come off as extremely judgmental to vulnerable and intelligent clients. Other approaches, like Motivational Interviewing, adopt a neutral stance that offers the potential for clients to actually explore their feelings instead of just getting rid of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivational_interviewing

Edit: re-reading my comment, I think I am coming off too hard on CBT. There are real reasons why clients can come out of CBT thinking the therapist is trying to find what is twisted with them or having them fill out pointless booklets - this does not completely undercut what CBT is about. There is good working going on to combine CBT with Motivational Interviewing to improve treatment of depression and suicidality.

http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2011_Br...

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#110

Post by synecdoche » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 1:14 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #47

Right now I am depressed. I feel terrible, and very, very guilty that I feel the way I do. I don't want to do anything, but I do want to do something to distract me away from my awful feeling of numbness. I worry about the future at times, and feel I'm at a dead end. I worry about my kids, and my wife, and my ageing parents. I'm sleeping constantly, but when I sleep my dreams are too vivid. Despite it all, I'm a func…

I recognise some of the symptoms you describe; feeling guilty and feeling shame for my shortcomings. When asked what I would like to do, like you I didn't want to do anything.

I used to be depressed. Here is my experience. My depression ended about 6 months ago and lasted for about 4 years. Before then I've been depressed on and off most of my life, sometimes as severely as this time, other times just as nearly constant anxiety and a general resignation to the feeling that my character is depressive.

After some time and a big change in my life, I tried to get help. At the start I was helped by seeing a psychologist (who practiced CBT) and by taking medication. Later I couldn't have therapy any more but remained on medication.

I slowly recovered, and I think it was because I was lucky to get on the right track. That track was to be honest about all, and not try to hide any, aspects about myself, to everybody. Also those aspects that may not be perceived as positive in the norms of society. This turned out to be quite a relief. I had decided that I'd do that no matter how much social pressure I would feel from thinking I'd be perceived as different or unaccepted. This had been a fear all my life, and still is. Situations come up quite frequently when I do this fearing total rejection, but I still do it. There's fear but no anxiety. I've come to realise that honesty is much more valuable, and perhaps the most valuable thing of all. Not only to me, but to others too.

Recently I got a tremendous boost and confirmation when I heard about some of the reasoning behind the development of something called Non-violent Communication, in which it is also touched upon depression. I can't say that NC would help others or even myself at the outset, but it made a lot of sense to me.