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One Road Out of Depression

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Re: One Road Out of Depression

#121

Post by itschekkers »

swimorsinka wrote: post #115
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've an odd question for you: How did you wind up sticking with meditation? What made you notice that it helped and how long did that take? I generally quit after 2-3 months. At first it is kind of nice, but as time goes, I become a bit frustrated and bored. I don't notice a difference in myself, and I always wonder if it isn't just that I don't know what I should be looking for. I'm mostly asking to get your persona…

I'm careful about suggesting meditation to my friends because I think it's different for everybody. For me, I've always had high anxiety. OCD is essentially anxiety when you boil it down to its core. That means I carry around a great deal of stress, sometimes to the point where I can feel it in my stomach all day every day. 3-5 days of meditation makes this feeling go away. I've seen studies that show your cortisol d…

Sorry to hear about your experience, but I'm glad you have found ways of managing symptoms. Like you say, people absolutely do respond differently to different medications. I'm a researcher at Yale, and we've been developing algorithms to figure out which antidepressant is most likely to help a specific patient. We've published some papers, and made our algorithm available online through our startup (www.spring.care/spring-assessment). If you find it helpful, please do send us feedback!! hello at spring dot care

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#122

Post by itschekkers »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #20

My Psychiatrist has been telling me, for over two decades, "All my patients are different." It's one of his better stock answers to questions. I have never been truely suicidial, but I had, I guess, a panic attack in my twenties, and from the next day on I was a nervous emotional mess for years. I tried to go back to a professional school I was in, but just crossing the Richmond bridge was a feat in itself. I knew my…

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I'm glad you made it through. I'm a researcher at Yale, and we've been developing algorithms to figure out which antidepressant is most likely to help a specific patient. We want to help patients get back on track sooner, to help minimize suffering. We've published our research, and made our algorithm available online through our startup (www.spring.care/spring-assessment). If you know of any other friends or family that are struggling with depression, please do let them know about our work, and I hope that they find it helpful

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#123

Post by duopixel »

pmoriarty wrote: post #79

Nutrition for me has been a big one. I've only very gradually realised the enormous impact my diet has had on my mood and cognition in general. Sure, I've heard a million times before that a good diet, sleep[1], and exercise[2] have a great impact on one's mood and brain function. And if I was ever challenged on it, I would have said that I believed it. But I never acted like I believed in it, until I actually starte…

cool to see a fellow ambiguous believer of dreams, here is my take on them https://medium.com/@duopixel/an-exploration-into-dreams-5b8e...

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#124

Post by ythl »

upstarter wrote: post #76

I was able to drop anti-depressants with 1 super-well-prepared LSD experience in nature. Since then, I do meditation daily, up to 1.5 hours at most (Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindful meditation method). Plus, I redo LSD once every 6 months. This worked extremely well. The pharma industry hates me for saying that. Not sorry.

> with 1 super-well-prepared LSD experience in nature

Please tell me you didn't run naked into a jungle

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#125

Post by dionidium »

crispweed wrote: post #87

I experienced some depression, as a teenager, and remember eventually finding a kind of 'logical' (or perhaps 'philosophical') way out of it. A key part of this was that, for me, depression is linked to lack of purpose. So there was this question hanging over me, 'what is the purpose of it all'. Well the answer to that question was then essentially 'why are you asking?'. Putting it less glibly, if you are unhappy abo…

I think you're right that this sort of approach to bootstrapping purpose is the only one that could possibly work. But once every 5 or so years I remember and become fixated again on the fact that there's nothing underneath.

And the results aren't good.

If I could figure out how to skip that quinquennial crisis, then things would be a lot better.

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#126

Post by stbn »

swimorsinka wrote: post #89

Author here. Thanks for all the comments, I'm surprised to see so much interest here on Hacker News. I figured this would be one of my posts that collected dust. For the record, my way out of this happened to be psychological, but that doesn't mean I'm against medication. It just didn't happen to be my experience, so I can't comment on it. I try to avoid topics I don't know anything about.

Thank you for publishing this. The mere notion that there's other people dealing with similar problems helps easing the pain, maybe because one feels understood for a change, to some extent at least. In fact, I found your piece so valuable that I created an offline copy to keep.

And I think all the reactions in this thread are just substitutional for a multitude of readers; you never know how many lives you have actually touched. Even writing this ridicilous comment needed to be overcome because depression feels like such a shameful thing to admit.

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#127

Post by mabcat »

petercooper wrote: post #67
77pt77 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep ignoring it for another 7 years by just burying yourself in work it'll certainly continue to be OK. No way one day it's going come back with a vengeance

If you're obese and go on an exercise regime, you might think you'll just get fat again when you stop the exercise regime. In the short term, that's probably true. But if you do it long enough, you'd expect someone who has exercised for many years to eventually develop better eating habits :-) And so it goes.

To a first approximation, nobody recovers from obesity. Less than 1% of obese people regain a normal weight through any kind of lifestyle change. What works, kind of, is bariatric surgery.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/kcl-lco07141...

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#128

Post by metaphorm »

rickdale wrote: post #65

I am going to suggest something that is not usually suggested. But I have seen it work wonders. Find a place where it is legal, and grow marijuana. If it suits you, smoke it, but ultimately start a garden and grow the plant. People refer to the medicinal values of marijuana, but the one fact that is scientifically proven that is often left out is that having a garden and working in a garden is good for your mental he…

this is good advice. and if cannabis isn't legal to grow where you live, then plant tomatoes, or tulips, or some basil and oregano and mint.

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#129

Post by metaphorm »

perfectfire wrote: post #110
rickdale wrote: post #65

I am going to suggest something that is not usually suggested. But I have seen it work wonders. Find a place where it is legal, and grow marijuana. If it suits you, smoke it, but ultimately start a garden and grow the plant. People refer to the medicinal values of marijuana, but the one fact that is scientifically proven that is often left out is that having a garden and working in a garden is good for your mental he…

I tried marijuana legally (Colorado) twice (each time was a couple of months) in a desperate bid to help out my anxiety. I had read good things about it treating PTSD and people in general use marijuana to relax right? So, I thought it had a chance of helping. For me I found it didn't really help with anxiety and I didn't like the feeling of a slight loss of control. I gave it a good go and then even tried it a secon…

I think your issue is this

> I didn't like the feeling of a slight loss of control

Cannabis can help you relax, but you have to be willing and able to relax in the first place. that means being ok with feeling a slight loss of control.

Re: One Road Out of Depression

#130

Post by reitanqild »

mabcat wrote: post #127
petercooper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're obese and go on an exercise regime, you might think you'll just get fat again when you stop the exercise regime. In the short term, that's probably true. But if you do it long enough, you'd expect someone who has exercised for many years to eventually develop better eating habits :-) And so it goes.

To a first approximation, nobody recovers from obesity. Less than 1% of obese people regain a normal weight through any kind of lifestyle change. What works, kind of, is bariatric surgery. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/kcl-lco07141...

This might be correct for now but it doesn't need to be so.

A good number of people do regain normal weight only by eating healthier and wait.

I think more people could if we stopped scaring them away from trying really hard by talking about how hard is it etc.

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