This reminds me of: http://patientslikeme.com
Medical sites like this should really use https by default.
Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
121–130 of 248 posts
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#122I 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…
My brother committed suicide. He died for nothing,and nobody in the family even knows why he died. 10 years later, I feel like I dont care he died anymore, I just cant feel sorry for people committing suicide, it accomplishes nothing,except destroying a family ,making relatives feel guilty all their life.
Suicide is the most selfish thing one can do, that's my opinion.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#123Very sorry for your loss. I have not lost family to suicide but I have lost two friends to this. There's nothing else to say really.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#124I'm extremely sorry for your loss EMRo.
I'm not aware of your brothers mental health issues but I can certainty relate. If I find that my mental health is deteriorating I try to do two things. 1- Start the process of cognitive creativity to stimulate my mind 2- Reach out to the world by attempting to solve someones problems
By taking focus away from my world and looking at others, I can better come to self realization and my drive to good use by connecting with others. Often when times are hard you just need to reach out and get a response from anyone. I decided to make this website http://boopoohoo.com that allows for that feedback loop I need to keep going. I don't know the people there and it doesn't get all that much traffic but I check it daily just encase someone has left me a message. A simple thing such as telling a total stranger your opinion on a delama they are having can make a world of difference in their day.
If you ever need to reach out, I'm happy to help.....
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#125Thank 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…
Clinical depression is often a result not of one's external environment or social situation, but a chemical imbalance in the brain (Serotonin in particular). I'm certainly no expert on the topic, but from what I know science still doesn't have a definitive answer to what brings such an imbalance about. Also it is sometimes hereditary.
External factors (financial/relationship problems and the other various pressures of life) can contribute to the problem and either be a trigger for or worsen the symptoms. But there are many instances in which someone who is otherwise successful and happy with things in general (as it sounds like this man was) can suffer from it. Everything can be going fantastic in your life, but the "black dog" comes visiting nonetheless.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#126Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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]
Fine, he was a morally bankrupt doctor. I agree I should not have claimed otherwise in my initial invective and apologize for my error, but let me reiterate: his stance on mental illness did not originate from his medical or scientific observations, but from his philosophy. And despite living through fifty years of startling advances in medicine, where huge swaths of mental illness were found to have biological origins in the brain, he never recanted. So fuck him, he was an asshole.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. 100%, although I wish we talked more about the challenge of determining that someone is suicidal. Here's what I wrestle with the most about this. I fear that if I "misdiagnose" someone as suicidal, that I might have now given them the idea that there is such a thing as su…
As somebody who's been there (on both sides) I don't believe that anybody who might act on suicidal ideation would not have already considered suicide as an option. I'd say that, if you're worried, starting a conversation about it (in person) is just about the best thing you could do. A "missed diagnosis" is far worse than a "misdiagnosis". Sorry for the pun.
I haven't examined the statistics myself, but isn't it known that suicides go up when there are news stories about them, even in a preventive effor? This implies that suicides are, in fact, somewhat suggestible.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#129> 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…
It sure is interesting that your two primary supporters in this discussion (JustinCEO and aforrester) were created more than a year ago but haven't posted anything on HN until today, when they showed up to support you. No, wait, aforrester made one post on the day it was created, supporting your position in a totally different discussion of suicide. My mistake. Still waiting for that evidence I asked for, by the way.
I don't appreciate the implication that I'm not a person. Xenophanes posted the link to this discussion to a public email list where (you may find this shocking), some people agree with him and are interested in this kind of discussion.
He also mentioned that HN is blocking him from posting more, so maybe you can blame Paul Graham for you not getting the answers you wanted. But there's still hope.
Want answers? Want a discussion on a forum that without censorship? Want a discussion where you won't be punished if you say "What You Can't Say"[0], as xenophanes dared do today? I think he, myself, and others would be happy to answer your questions at:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fallible-ideas/info
If you don't come, and instead stick to a forum where hardly anyone continues a discussion for more than 12 hours, then I for one will figure you aren't really that interested, and I won't be motivated to write answers for you.
Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain
#130There 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.
When I get depressed, which usually happens around this time of year, I typically enjoy talking to other hackers. We can talk about something that isn't our own mind(s). This goes for music, too. A huge key for me is to distract my mind with something that interests me, and makes me feel productive, rather than "sitting & spinning" on a subject that is making me feel bad about myself. Talking about things that interest me makes me feel better about myself.
Disclaimer: I have never been psychologically evaluated for depression or anxiety.