Moved.
Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
11–20 of 95 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#12It's possible that your courses are boring. After a while at university I was craving for measuring myself against the real world, not just against artificial problems set by the teachers.
Perhaps you could try doing something entirely different every once in a while?
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#13If you know that you are depressed and can talk about it, that's a good step and you should be glad to be aware of this.
It's difficult to quit playing games and procrastinate even when someone's not depressed...
Meeting new people and finding a project seems a like good thing, at least it worked for me. You should also try and going out for like walking, biking, or whatever.
And you should avoid medicine, alcohol or drugs.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#14It sounds like you might be burned out by university (depression is a symptom of burnout).
Some suggestions that helped me and might work for you:
- See whether there is anything in your life that might be causing the burnout/depression. Do you have any emotional issues in your life (i.e. something in your life causing anger/resentment)? Do you have excessive stress/responsibilities? Are you doing what you really want to do with your life?
- Do more enjoyable, motivating, goal-oriented activities, both physical and mental.
- Get sufficient sleep.
- Give up alcohol and caffeine, as well as any other psychoactive substances.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#15I struggled with depression for YEARS. I tried everything I could find. Exercise helped a lot. Coffee helped. Meditation helped. All of these things worked but I was still in really down. Finely after years I decided what have I got to lose and went on antidepressants.
It was the best thing I ever did. The world opened up for me. I was able to make a lot of changes that were very healthy in my life. I finely had outside interests other than work and sleep. It was like night and day.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#16* A daily routine is incredibly powerful -- /whatever/ the routine is and /whatever/ it is that you do. If you find yourself playing computer games for two hours every night, then that might be how you learn to concentrate again. Don't fight it before you look at yourself appreciatively.
* Do anything you need to find back your cognitive strength. You will be less intelligent while your brain chemistry is broken. That shouldn't drag you down because it's absolutely normal and natural, but it's frightening if you are a student and programmer, and used to measuring your self-worth in how well you can concentrate.
* Sleep deprivation helps supress depression for a day. Might help you get back into gear every now and then.
* St John's Wort is worth giving a try. People discuss whether it's more helpful than antidepressants, but then again it often doesn't even count as medicine. Took six weeks to kick into my own brain, and cured its chemistry back up to a point that I could sustain myself. The way back out of depression was an existential rollercoaster of emotions and attitudes with increasing frequency: Weeks at first, hours at the end while I got more stable. Some medicine might be useful for dampening, but only for that.
* Don't insist on keeping social contacts. Depressed you is somebody else than healthy you, and you can rebuild all truly good connections even after a couple of years in case they break apart. Similarly, don't insist on keeping anything else in your life if you find it doesn't work out at the moment. This is where you change careers, majors, hobbys, as well as losing your girlfriend. Keep as many things as you comfortably can a constant however, just to make it easier on yourself.
* Cognitive behavioural therapy. There's a good book on it called Feeling Good that told me /exactly/ the lessons I had missed in life, but your mileage may vary.
* Do whatever feels good to you. Your major job in life now is to make yourself feel good. After all, most people feel better than you, so it's well within your right to ignore others (and others' expectations) while focussing on yourself.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#17Exercise. Read "The best exercises for mental illnesses": http://www.thementalrunner.org/p/the-best-exercise-for-menta... (Via the "exercise out of depression" subreddit: https://m.reddit.com/r/EOOD/ )
The evidence for exercise as a treatment for depression is weak at best.
You should probably not recommend exercise as a treatment for depression.
Of course, exercise is important and everyone should be exercising; and it might help with "resiliance".
http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...
> When only high-quality trials were included, exercise had only a small effect on mood that was not statistically significant.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#18This won't get a lot of votes, but it ended up as diet and exercise for me. When I dropped caffeine and alcohol my anxiety went away. When I exercised my depression went away. I tried a lot of things, but it ended up figuring out that I wasn't eating well or working out. Now I do crossfit. I know, I know. It's a cult blah blah. But go try it. You need to be exercising every day to get all that endorphin goodness and…
Diet and exercise is extremely important if one wants to beat depression.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#19If I read this right, your still in college and hitting the wall. Its fairly normal as a lot of people turn get burnout during college.
The diet and exercise suggestions are probably the best. Taking some walks and changing your daily scenery would probably help. Do you eat in the same place everyday? Pick a random book from the library and read it. If there are campus activities that seem interesting, go do them instead of playing games.
Don't freak out if your passion is missing for a while. Its just an ebb and you need to recharge. You'll already shown inspiration, you need to let it come back.
Re: Ask HN: How did you deal with depression?
#201. Get medicated.
2. Set one small baby-step goal each day. (set an appointment today, etc.) Change the goal every time.
3. Change your environment. Move cities or schools if need be.
4. Exercise. Start with one rep on day 1, two reps on day 2, etc. Baby steps.
5. Ask for feedback on stuff. Any positive feedback helps motivate you to learn and do more projects.
6. Seek a healthy relationship.
7. Be vulnerable. Let somebody else that cares about you know of your state.
8. Be spiritually-curious. I'm christian and that inspires a lot.
9. Realize when your "objective observations" are not objective. Don't be blindsided by emotion.
10. Vent your emotion in a healthy and controlled way.
11. Write one sentence about your week every week. Again, baby steps.
12. Never do drugs. This just amplifies your problems.
13. This includes no smoking.
14. If you make lists and spreedsheets, track the frequency you leave the house.
15. Make alarms on your phone.
16. Volunteer once a week.
These are mostly based on experience and personal observations.