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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

#151

Post by benatkin »

JustinCEO wrote: post #129
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does the person behind Xenophanes consider each of their online identities to be a "person"? Nice dodge with that choice of word. It's easier to claim that a fake online identity is a person than it is to claim that a fake online identity is a human.

> Want a discussion where you won't be punished if you say "What You Can't Say"[0], as xenophanes dared do today?

I smell astroturf.

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

#152

Post by einhverfr »

doktrin wrote: post #150
einhverfr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mental illness is a really tough thing to discuss in an objective way. See the debates about the DSM-5. I personally think mental health and mental illness are socially constructed. This being said, the experiences relating to mental illness are very real. The larger question is how we make sense of them as a society. For something like depression how much of the illness is cognitive? How much is biological? How much…

> I personally think mental health and mental illness are socially constructed. > This being said, the experiences relating to mental illness are very real. What's the logical basis for this pair of assertions? How can the "experience" be real while the illness is not?

> What's the logical basis for this pair of assertions? How can the "experience" be real while the illness is not?

What is the difference in value between a $5 bill and a $20 bill? Is this difference not both real and socially constructed?

I.e. why do you assume that what is socially constructed can't be real?

The question is, really, what goes into the experience and what are the limits to the current science. If it is socially constructed, the science is limited to the current cultural context.

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

#153

Post by cypherpunks01 »

goshx wrote: post #126
vellum wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical sites like this should really use https by default.

It does, when you login.

However, POSTing from a http login page to https "logged in" page opens you up to javascript injection attacks that can sniff credentials as you perform the login action.

Further, ssl stripping man-in-the-middle attacks on any http page on a site can force your session to remain in cleartext, even if you navigate to a page that's supposed to be encrypted. Your webserver really needs to redirect to https always, to prevent against this.

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

#154

Post by primitivesuave »

camus2 wrote: post #122
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…

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.

My best friend from childhood threw himself in front of a train almost exactly 1 year ago (Feb 18th). He had just got his college degree, had an amazing family and all the support in the world.

When he took his own life, I had an initial period of unanswerable questions and great sorrow, followed by deep resentment. He had so many people he could have reached out to and so many people reaching out to him, and he just decided to take an easier way out. It was selfish to leave his family hanging like that with so many questions, and the worst part is how difficult it was for them to move on.

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

#155

Post by doktrin »

saalweachter wrote: post #127
JustinCEO wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 orig…

> 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

Pretty much this. Having just heard about him today, it's clear his [Szasz] statements reflect technological limitations of yesteryear combined with intense personal bias.

Why anyone would still espouse the concepts this guy put forward is beyond me.

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

#156

Post by doktrin »

einhverfr wrote: post #152
doktrin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally think mental health and mental illness are socially constructed. > This being said, the experiences relating to mental illness are very real. What's the logical basis for this pair of assertions? How can the "experience" be real while the illness is not?

> What's the logical basis for this pair of assertions? How can the "experience" be real while the illness is not? What is the difference in value between a $5 bill and a $20 bill? Is this difference not both real and socially constructed? I.e. why do you assume that what is socially constructed can't be real? The question is, really, what goes into the experience and what are the limits to the current science. If it…

> I.e. why do you assume that what is socially constructed can't be real?

I'm assuming you wouldn't say "pneumonia is socially constructed". If you did, I would read that as "pneumonia isn't real".

> The question is, really, what goes into the experience and what are the limits to the current science. If it is socially constructed, the science is limited to the current cultural context.

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.

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

#157

Post by dfc »

Mz wrote: post #106
curun1r wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dem…

My original comment was motivated by genuine compassion and empathy. I have been starting and stopping a response to OP's reply to me for an hour now and I am unsure of how to phrase things. Your mom has a point, but when do we respect and try to prevent the pain of the next family? Every time this happens I understand and am tempted by the "now is not the time" reaction but I am also reminded of my favorite piece of writing:

  "Frankly, I have yet to engage in a [discussion of suicide and depression] that
  was 'well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the
  disease of [depression]. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings
  in the ear of every [parent/friend/depressive] with piercing familiarity. This
  'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'"

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

#158

Post by mikeash »

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…

Mental illness is a physical disease, not something to do with "disillusionment" or anything like that.

Depressed people can be disillusioned, of course, but that is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is still somewhat mysterious, but it's biological, physical, not an attitude thing.

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

#159

Post by mikeash »

camus2 wrote: post #122
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…

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.

Would you be saying that if he died of cancer instead of mental illness?

People have this bizarre idea that mental illness somehow doesn't "count". That you have to fight it, and that if you lose, it's your own fault.

You are, right here, blaming the victim of the disease. Your brother died from a mental illness. It killed him, just as surely as cancer or a heart attack might have killed him. You'd never, ever, ever say that someone who's killed by a heart attack is "selfish", so don't do it for mental illnesses either.

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

#160

Post by pyrrhotech »

camus2 wrote: post #122
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…

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.

I get the point but there are definitely more selfish things one can do. Blow up buildings, serial kill, rape people, etc. While suicide clearly affects others, on some level we and only we should have a say over what we do with our own lives.
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