Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

evanmrose.tumblr.com

91–100 of 248 posts

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#91
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per your logic, we should abandon heart transplant surgeries as soon as one doesn't go as planned. Anecdotal evidence against the efficacy of any medical treatment is not reason enough to abandon it.

Quite a lot of attempts at suicide prevention efforts don't go as planned. Do you disagree?

Pancreatic cancer kills about 75% of patients within a year and 95% within five. From this, we take away "let's improve treatment methods", not "oncology is a scam that the free market should eradicate".

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#92
post #59

The fact that talking about mental health issues is beyond "the fringe of acceptable conversation" is harmful. I wholeheartedly agree that something needs to change on this front in order to prevent more tragedies. One small step would be to stop saying "lost the battle and passed from this world" and say "committed suicide." We will not be able to engage in thoughtful, constructive and mature conversations if one of…

Agreed. I chose to soften the language for my mother's sake.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#93
There is an organisation called BlueHackers.org [0] which was started at the Open Source Developers Conference. It has a strong presence at linux.conf.au as well.

The organisation started from a very brief lightning talk that went something along the lines of (me paraphrasing from memory):

"Who here in this room has experienced depression?" (for which the person asking the question put their hand up. After a few seconds, quite a few people in the crowd had their hands up. "Look around, I want you to know that you are not the only ones who experience this, and there are always people willing to talk."

One of the ideas they have is, for anybody who is willing, to put a BlueHackers sticker on their laptop. This little gesture is more than just a decal though, because it informs other hackers that you understand that if they are feeling depressed, they don't need to deal with it on their own. You are telling them that you are willing to discuss anything with them, especially if they are feeling down.

I have had the sticker on my laptop for over two years now. Although I haven't had anybody recognise it, or comment on it, or indeed discuss any issues with me as a consequence of it, and although I myself have been lucky enough not to have to experience depression, I am absolutely, 100% willing to respond to anybody who wishes to chat to me about such issues (on the off chance they recognise the BlueHackers sticker). I would love if this idea took off, so that people all around the world could see that there are so many people who are willing to talk.

[0] - http://bluehackers.org/

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#94

There is an organisation called BlueHackers.org [0] which was started at the Open Source Developers Conference. It has a strong presence at linux.conf.au as well. The organisation started from a very brief lightning talk that went something along the lines of (me paraphrasing from memory): "Who here in this room has experienced depression?" (for which the person asking the question put their hand up. After a few seco…

This is amazing. Would love to see something like this for wider communities as well. I have a spot picked out on my laptop already.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#95
post #59

The fact that talking about mental health issues is beyond "the fringe of acceptable conversation" is harmful. I wholeheartedly agree that something needs to change on this front in order to prevent more tragedies. One small step would be to stop saying "lost the battle and passed from this world" and say "committed suicide." We will not be able to engage in thoughtful, constructive and mature conversations if one of…

> One small step would be to stop saying "lost the battle and passed from this world" and say "committed suicide."

Or just 'suicided'. Suicide is typically a noun, but can be used as a verb too. Using the word commit, to me, ties it with judgmental phrases like 'committing a crime' or 'committing a sin'. Part of changing our perspective on mental illness will be to call out the subtle ways in which we demonize or otherwise blame the victim.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#96

There is an organisation called BlueHackers.org [0] which was started at the Open Source Developers Conference. It has a strong presence at linux.conf.au as well. The organisation started from a very brief lightning talk that went something along the lines of (me paraphrasing from memory): "Who here in this room has experienced depression?" (for which the person asking the question put their hand up. After a few seco…

I don't see a place to buy a decal on the site. Can you point me in the right direction? I'd love to become part of the movement.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#97

Thank you for starting a conversation about this. I know it's difficult, but it's important for the health and wellbeing of many other people struggling with the same problems that there are conversations like this one. I've struggled with depression too, though never been suicidal. Both of my parents made multiple suicide attempts last year. I hope you don't blame yourself for not being there for your brother. You c…

Without sounding insensitive, may I ask what it is - that you think - that is at the root of this stripe of depression that you seem to be well acquainted with. I know that this sort of thing cannot be easily summed up. However, most of us on the outside have little clue about what sets these things in motion, for various individuals, in the first place. Broadly and typically, is it a fundamental disillusionment with…

I cannot answer for Rob, but there can be significant bio-medical factors. I am not really prone to depression. If I am depressed for more than a short period of time, you can bet I am anemic, not sleeping well enough, etc. But I have a serious medical condition and have lived with quite a lot of crazy-making stress over the years. If my brain chemistry is wonky enough, I can be suicidal, in spite of not being the depressive type.

I know a fair amount about such things. I suspect bio-medical/brain chemistry issues are much more common than is generally recognized. I manage a lot of my issues in part with diet. I think a lot more can be done. But I don't know how to get the word out.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your credentials consist of personal anecdotes? Maybe it's time to start taking the issue more seriously. I think it's a serious issue deserving a more serious approach. For example, you might try reading literature with multiple different perspectives on the issue. Then try to figure out which ideas are right and why. (If you've already done this, forgive me, and please please inform me why Szasz is mistaken, I w…

I don't give two shits what Thomas Szasz thought about mental illness, because he wasn't a scientist or even a doctor, he was a goddamn libertarian philosopher . He found mental illness philosophically inconvenient because he couldn't see a way around the State being morally justified in providing coercive treatment to the mentally ill, so he just decided they didn't exist. He was an asshole who spent sixty years shi…

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

> In 1938, Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Science in medicine, and received his M.D. from the same university in 1944.[7]

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#99

There is an organisation called BlueHackers.org [0] which was started at the Open Source Developers Conference. It has a strong presence at linux.conf.au as well. The organisation started from a very brief lightning talk that went something along the lines of (me paraphrasing from memory): "Who here in this room has experienced depression?" (for which the person asking the question put their hand up. After a few seco…

I don't see a place to buy a decal on the site. Can you point me in the right direction? I'd love to become part of the movement.

Traditionally, they are handed out for free at conferences. I'm quite confident that if you are going to a conference or a user group, they'd be happy to post some to you (I'm not part of the organisation, just like what they do).

If you just want something for your laptop, I suggest printing out on a piece of paper and sticky taping it to your machine[0]. Although a license is not specified, I'm quite confident that from speaking to these people (and their philosophy on open source) they'd be more than happy for people to print and share them.

[0] http://bluehackers.org/logos

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to discuss this seriously? If so, cite an actual study and say specifically what conclusion it reaches and specifically how that contradicts Szasz. You seem to be implying that Szasz and I hold our positions due to scientific ignorance, which is demonstrably false, and insulting. But maybe you didn't mean it that way.

You could start by countering Kendell, Shorter, and Clarke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz#Criticism

Kendell point (1). Szasz's position is not that diseases must be diagnosed by looking for chemical or structural abnormalities. Rather, such abnormalities are a criterion for having the disease. It may not be possible to find those abnormalities until after the person dies.

Point (2): the existence of such abnormalities is required for a person to have a disease, but not all abnormalities are considered diseases. This is as irrelevant as saying that not all ice cream contains water because some water is not ice cream.

Point (3) is also irrelevant. Szasz's claim is that mental illness is behaviour that a person undertakes for a reason, albeit a reason that people don't like. That idea that such behaviour will turn out to be caused by a disease is like looking for a hardware fault in your iPhone because you have installed an app your dislike.

I addressed (4) earlier. For my reply to point (5) see my reply to point (3).

As for Shorter, note that his statement that mental illnesses are brain diseases is incompatible with Kendell's points since Kendell is attacking the idea that lesions are necessary for disease while Short alleges that such lesions exist. So which position does the poster actually hold? I have already addressed points (1) and (3) by explaining that mental illness is not biological, so let's skip to point (2). Szasz's point was that if a person was found to have a brain disease, brain doctors would treat him with his consent. Psychiatrists don't do this and so there is some difference between psychiatrists and doctors who deal with brain diseases.

Clarke. Point (1): if a person claims to be mentally ill then he is claiming to have an illness when he doesn't. It is better to face up to this squarely and discuss why the person in question is acting the way he acts. If a person claims he is not a moral agent and refuses to face up to his moral disagreements with others, you're not doing him any favours by agreeing.

Point (2): people get labelled as mentally ill because they have a moral problem, that is, behaviour that is regarded as undesirable by somebody who may or may not be the patient. It is true that such problems would not vanish if we stopped calling them mental illness but Szasz didn't claim that they would. Rather, he claimed that we should face up to those problems squarely and stop using quasi-medical excuses to coerce the kind of people commonly labelled mentally ill. If you want to coerce somebody you should have to make an explicit argument that his behaviour should be treated as a crime.

As for point (3), abandoning treatments that the public dislikes is entirely compatible with picking some other set of treatments that the patient dislikes and imposing it on him.

Post reply on HN