Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I built an app to fix my depression

blog.elifiner.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 179 posts

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#111

Post by jointpdf »

cabaalis wrote: post #108
dawg- wrote: post #104

So many mental health apps these days with so little high quality evidence of their effectiveness. And there are so many of these apps out there, why would someone build their own? Maybe OP is onto something though. Could it be that the creative process and challenge of building an app to solve a personal problem is just as good a treatment for depression as the app itself?

Part of my job is analyzing quality metrics surrounding depression. Everyone is failing, and uncontrolled depression is an unseen pandemic. We are in rapid innovation phase.

Quality metrics surrounding depression? Can you elaborate?

Also, are you the right person to complain to about the quality of my depression? It is quite poor and I would like get a refund.

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#113

Post by NalNezumi »

GordonS wrote: post #62
NalNezumi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, how did you find out that you were hiding your depression from yourself? (I assume you wrote from personal experience) Especially when other people tell you that they think you have depression?

Yes, I'm writing from personal experience. I'm pushing 40, and I've felt this way since I was a young kid. I think because it started so early, it was just the way things had always been. Probably as a kid I didn't have the emotional maturity to recognise what was happening either. Nobody has ever told me they think I have depression - I'm very good at hiding it. My main coping mechanism, if you can call it that, was…

No thank you for your rambling, it is for me (in my late 20's) an anecdote most valuable.

I asked because I don't consider myself remotely close to it, having good job (well until today my last day) and a good safety net. But in the past few days, my SO & a friend have told me that I should maybe seek therapy. My first instinct is to dismiss is and focus my time on betterment of myself through other means, but your anecdote made me think of the possibility that I might just be oblivious about it.

Unfortunately I live in a country where mental health is still a stigma and my insurance is gone with the work, but your experience at least nudge me towards trying to seek out professionals for it. (when I one day return to my homecountry where it isn't a stigma)

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#114

Post by dawg- »

cabaalis wrote: post #108
dawg- wrote: post #104

So many mental health apps these days with so little high quality evidence of their effectiveness. And there are so many of these apps out there, why would someone build their own? Maybe OP is onto something though. Could it be that the creative process and challenge of building an app to solve a personal problem is just as good a treatment for depression as the app itself?

Part of my job is analyzing quality metrics surrounding depression. Everyone is failing, and uncontrolled depression is an unseen pandemic. We are in rapid innovation phase.

I am frustrated that we feel the need to keep "innovating" when we already know how to fix depression. In no particular order: Physical activity, social participation, getting enough sunlight, and creative outlets.

The problem is those things are hard. And downloading an app on your phone is easy.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) it is still true that you reap what you sow. I'm afraid all this "innovation" around mental health is just sowing the seeds for more people spending more time sitting inside, alone, not moving, staring at screens, consuming.

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#115

Post by Jeff_Brown »

NalNezumi wrote: post #109
teekert wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, as op also insinuates, it is all about acceptance. Accepting one's shortcomings, accepting that you can't do everything you want(ed), that you wont become what you always dreamed of. Love yourself despite of what you think of as shortcomings, think of the things you did achieve (and the things you have, like a stoic philosopher). You are a pretty incredible being with pretty incredible skills. If only you ac…

It surely is acceptance, but how do you convince yourself of it? How do you convince a young college student, a just-out-of college late 20's (me), a about-to-hit-midlife late 30's/40's person that is struggling to reach the expectation they have put? Tell a college kid to lower his expectation and he will feel like a "unmotivated" person, tell a 30's/40's that and he will feel like a failure, all his struggle for no…

YMMV but for me, simply talking to lots of people about their lifestyles, expectations and goals helped me feel a lot better about my own.

That might sound obvious, but it's really easy to maintain a large set of relationships without ever talking about those things. Politics, science, arts, sports, etc. are so easy to fill a conversation with that it's a common pitfall to hardly ever broach the subject of who we are and what we're doing.

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#116

Post by cabaalis »

jointpdf wrote: post #111
cabaalis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of my job is analyzing quality metrics surrounding depression. Everyone is failing, and uncontrolled depression is an unseen pandemic. We are in rapid innovation phase.

Quality metrics surrounding depression? Can you elaborate? Also, are you the right person to complain to about the quality of my depression? It is quite poor and I would like get a refund.

"Quality metrics" is an industry term regarding hitting certain benchmarks of care in a provider's patient population to measure "quality" of care by a provider or group. Payers measure providers for various reasons using well-defined protocols.

An example of a depression protocol is depression remission:

(1) Was an index test performed in prior year to identify depression (2) Was a followup performed this year (3) Does the followup test indicate depression has gone into remission.

There are various other measures for depression.

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#117

Post by teekert »

NalNezumi wrote: post #109
teekert wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, as op also insinuates, it is all about acceptance. Accepting one's shortcomings, accepting that you can't do everything you want(ed), that you wont become what you always dreamed of. Love yourself despite of what you think of as shortcomings, think of the things you did achieve (and the things you have, like a stoic philosopher). You are a pretty incredible being with pretty incredible skills. If only you ac…

It surely is acceptance, but how do you convince yourself of it? How do you convince a young college student, a just-out-of college late 20's (me), a about-to-hit-midlife late 30's/40's person that is struggling to reach the expectation they have put? Tell a college kid to lower his expectation and he will feel like a "unmotivated" person, tell a 30's/40's that and he will feel like a failure, all his struggle for no…

It maybe difficult to change your expectations of life, maybe we should be asking, why do have these high expectations in the first place?

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#118

Post by sudosteph »

NalNezumi wrote: post #55

Read the blog post and also the other blog post in the page ( "Why discipline isn’t the answer to procrastination", "How to stick to good habits without being hard on yourself", "How fear of shame causes procrastination", "How fear of success causes procrastination"). I get the feeling that the author is in a situation a lot of people in HN could relate to: A situation where Performance Anxiety, Fear of missing out (…

I can speak on the ADHD aspect of that at least. As for the other things you've described - those might be more anxiety-adjacent issues, and aren't something I can speak to. I've still dealt with depression a few times - but each time that had it's root in untreated ADHD or autism spectrum issues.

Personally, the issue for the longest time was that I didn't understand my own issues. I went way too long without seeking a diagnosis, because I mistakenly believed that medical treatment wouldn't be helpful or attainable as an adult. Turns out medical treatment (psychiatrist - not a therapist) helped me a whole lot. So did doing detailed research on ADHD. The work of Dr. Russel Barkley on ADHD as an executive functioning disorder was particularly informative.

As for trying to reconcile my ADHD with a (healthy) sense of motivation - the best thing I found was actually from some random blog post that basically summarized the information in this article (https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/ ). The brief summary: most people without ADHD have behaviors which are motivated by the concepts of Importance, Rewards, and Consequences. People with ADHD are aware of all of those things existing, and often do "care" about them - but if you look at the behavior of people with ADHD - those aren't the things which actually motivate us to action on a regular basis. Instead, we are motivated by Interest, Challenge, Novelty, and Urgency. It's not ideal, but even with medication, I've realized that is true for me - and I can't change it.

For some jobs, like my first post-college job working as a Support Engineer for Amazon AWS - those motivators were actually great. Tickets have really short-term SLAs and are often urgent, AWS was a challenging and interesting work environment, and for the the first year it everything was very novel. However, when I progressed in my in career towards more of a DevOps role, I started working somewhere which practiced two week sprints for everything - which was a total disaster. Kanban worked a good bit better, but no matter where I worked - the novelty, interest, and challenge of the work eventually wore off - and relying on crunch time to motivate myself was causing burnout.

I did think the consequence of guilt or shame from disappointing my teammates was a motivator and felt stress related to that. But in truth, that feeling was something that I mostly felt after I had forgot to do something or ran out of time - and not something that drove me to get work done.

So now I'm just leaning in to the whole thing, risks be damned. I left a pretty cushy remote-work salary job to build a startup, and I've started doing some freelance work on the side for extra income. I pick what I work on, so I'm super interested, I'm challenged frequently, it's novel (for now) and the freelance stuff is urgent because I don't get paid til I deliver. For stuff that is boring and executive functioning related (paying bills, scheduling meetings) - I try to automate as much as possible and be sure notifications for things go to both me and my non-ADHD co-founder who can nag me if I miss something. If I see a lot of success, I would like to pay a personal assistant or secretary to keep things organized / handle boring communications on my behalf. I spent a few years working for an executive who clearly had ADHD, and having an assistant was incredibly helpful to him.

I'm aware this could all crash and burn - but my daily needs are being met and I'm enjoying my life a lot more. It does feel like I'm working smarter. Though I am technically working harder too.

Re: I built an app to fix my depression

#119

Post by ColeyG »

phre4k wrote: post #48

Your depression couldn't have been that bad if you could create an app against it. Regular therapy would probably have been more effective and less dangerous for others.

This is a really hurtful and dangerous line of thinking. Imagine if you went to a Doctor and they said "you came to me to fix the problem, therefore you must not be sick".

This implies to be depressed you MUST be the worst form of depressed, or nearly suicidal to be deserving of help.

Post reply on HN