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

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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

saalweachter wrote: post #82
xenophanes wrote: post #29

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…

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by ChrisClark »

xenophanes wrote: post #29
Mz wrote: post #24

I get the impression that this is a long, polite way of saying Steve committed suicide. The last time I was on HN and the topic of suicide came up, I wrote kind of a ranty piece that I am not up to editing it (to remove the rantiness) and reposting. The short version: If you know someone who is suicidal and you care about them, spend time with them. In person. Suicide is almost always committed when one is alone. My…

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…

So, what you are saying is that if I notice that a friend of mine is suicidal, I should not try to spend time with him in person?

Am I still allowed to talk to him on the phone? Email? Can I be within a kilometer of his house? Is it like a restraining order?

All the comment you replied to is saying is that if you notice a friend in trouble, spend time with him. You seriously think that is an awful thing?

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

#104

Post by l33tbro »

pserwylo wrote: post #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 seco…

Cool sentiment, but what makes you think other "hackers" have the formal background to reach out and to a depressed person? If i was depressed, the last person I'd want to talk to about it are my hacker friends. The vast majority of the population simply have no idea how to talk to mentally ill people.

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

#105

Post by ChrisClark »

xenophanes wrote: post #16

> he did all the things he was supposed to do to get help in a moment of crisis - made multiple calls to his care providers, to 911 and even went to the hospital. He had been experiencing symptoms for several years but was in a highly-respected treatment program that was working intimately with him. So in other words, conventional psychiatry failed. And the author's solution seems to be to spread it more. Maybe after…

I'm sorry that everyone commenting here is against your religion, but please leave your baseless beliefs at home.

Or are you just trolling? Pretending to be a religiously intolerant bigot? Is this an example of Poe's law in action?

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

#106

Post by Mz »

curun1r wrote: post #95
dfc wrote: 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 oth…

Please see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7228583

I generally agree with you and stated clearly that it sounded like suicide. But, a) my mom says "funerals are for the living". So I think we need to respect the pain of the family here. And b) I have been writing online about very hard, delicate topics for quite a long time. So I have some practice with walking that line which I don't think we can expect or demand from someone in shock and mourning.

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

#107

Post by tunesmith »

xenophanes wrote: post #21
notastartup wrote: post #11

I would start out by saying there's a stigma around mental illness and that it's not a "real" illness and that it's "all in the head therefore not real". It is exactly this type of attitude we have had since the dark ages that much development of treatment and studies are now only beginning to take more shape. We have to have a much wider awareness of mental illness and how it affects the basic human rights.

How does it affect basic human rights, exactly? Some examples: People labelled mentally ill can be imprisoned without a trial. People labelled mentally ill can avoid prison when another person who did the same actions would go to jail. People labelled mentally ill can be drugged by force. This is bad for basic human rights, isn't it?

There exist some good points that you might agree with, but you're being insufferable.

Yes, it is true that many mental illnesses do not have a "screen" such that if you pass the screen, you have the illness, and if you fail it, you don't.

And yes, it means that the words we use for various mental illness might be catch-all concepts that will eventually fall into disfavor as our biological understanding increases.

And yes, it might also mean that many people who are told they must accept a lifetime diagnosis of "x" have indeed been misdiagnosed, and can later be "cured" (or reject the misdiagnosis, depending on how you look at it).

But. None of those realities mean that people are not emotionally hurting, or that they don't feel trapped to the point of self-destruction. And it doesn't mean they don't need help - emotional or pharmaceutical.

So, while you may have some beliefs or points that are worthwhile in a vacuum, it's extraordinarily insensitive the way you are communicating them, and the implications you are leaving people with. Especially in this thread.

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

#108

Post by thaumaturgy »

wozniacki wrote: post #88
thaumaturgy wrote: post #64

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…

For me, it seems to be multi-faceted. There's definitely some kind of mood swing component that seems entirely biological; regardless of whether things are going well in life or not, there are periods of between a week and sometimes as long as a month where I simply have difficulty getting up in the morning, focusing, socializing, and maintaining healthy habits like regular exercise. Usually my sugar consumption skyrockets when this happens and I keep bad hours and the cycle feeds into itself.

Then there seems to be a slightly greater sensitivity to problems. Outwardly, I can power through a lot of problems -- financial trouble, management, work, personal life stuff, whatever -- but inwardly, it kills me a little bit.

Annoyingly, other people's problems bother me a lot too, extending all the way out to sociological issues. I think this is part of what created David Foster Wallace's famous speech, "This is Water" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI) -- he eventually committed suicide. But this can also be a strength, it's what drives me to try to make a difference.

Anyway, the real trouble begins when I'm in a biological downswing and things in life start getting really hard. In a single year, I lost most of my friends over a disagreement, my parents both had serious issues (and I was their counselor for much of it), my business was struggling, and the effort I had put into training for search and rescue all Summer got wasted when the vehicle I was driving died on the way up to the final exam. It was just a lot of stuff all at once, so when the mood problems hit, I barely functioned at all for about a month.

The only common theme that I think I've found so far among people who struggle with depression is a feeling that nobody cares about them, or that they're undervalued in some really big way. Struggling with depression is challenging; struggling with it alone is extremely difficult.

On the other hand, because of the social stigma it currently carries, few people want to make a big deal of depression when they're struggling with it.

So, if you think you know someone who's having trouble with it, it can sometimes help them a lot to just initiate contact and suggest spending just a little bit of time doing something they enjoy: a card game, going out for a bit, watching TV, whatever. It doesn't have to get heavy. It'll help them to know that somebody cares.

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

#109

Post by ghswa »

wozniacki wrote: post #88
thaumaturgy wrote: post #64

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'll chime in here, if you don't mind - I'm bipolar[1].

My health often deteriorates for short periods of time, perhaps a day or two, sometimes a week or so. In these situations there is often some trigger - high workload, poor sleep hygiene etc. My mood doesn't usually reach such an extreme that it causes any significant difficulty day to day.

Episodes of illness that have a significant detrimental impact on day to day life seem to build up slowly. They start out like the episodes described above but they just keep on going until my mood is so extreme that day to day life becomes very difficult to deal with.

My most recent episode of this nature was probably caused by the stress of a couple of deaths in the family, a daughter who doesn't want to sleep, a wife commuting across country to work, a high workload myself and (frustratingly) mental health services not providing care when I could see my health was deteriorating.

It's been around 6 years between my last two episodes of that nature.

Poor sleep hygiene is by far the biggest risk for me and it becomes a vicious cycle if I'm in a manic phase. Other than that, continued high levels of stress are a problem but only really if I'm dealing with multiple stressors.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

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

#110

Post by thaumaturgy »

larrys wrote: post #79
thaumaturgy wrote: post #64

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…

I just forked and came up with your site with this: http://www.robsheldon.com/blog/depression-programming/ Just submitted it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7228491 Very interesting piece (will put my thoughts in the comments of that).

Yikes! Thanks. I'll try to participate in that thread a bit.
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