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If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

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Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#271

Post by davesque »

socceroos wrote: post #261
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

I dislike modern notions of abdicating responsibility for one's own actions by pointing to other problems. I believe we're all personally responsible for our output. You can have the worst input in the history of mankind - and this should generate sympathy, understanding and a desire to help - but your output is still entirely your responsibility. The are circumstances where someone can be considered incapable of rea…

It's really about what's effective. For a lot of people who deal with depression, feeling like people are blaming them makes things way worse. In that sense, blame simply doesn't work to bring about a different outcome, even if someone seems entirely culpable from a common viewpoint.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#272

Post by yesenadam »

ip26 wrote: post #189
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

Well, with at least some mental illnesses, e.g. hearing voices, the illness in part is that you think the voices are real. It doesn't occur to you that you might need the help of a psychiatrist. The whole thing develops out of trying to make sense of what you assume are real voices. Which is impossible, and drives you nuts making the attempt. [That happened to me, for a couple of years.]

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#273

Post by webmobdev »

gabriel34 wrote: post #222
webmobdev wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do you fast? Is it like the extreme fasting of muslims where you don't eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk, or is it like the hindu fasting where you only eat fruits and vegetables?

water and coffee only, from dinner to dinner

If I remember right, drinking coffee causes your body to lose water faster - so drinking coffee and water seem kind of contradictory.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#274

Post by jhayward »

ip26 wrote: post #189
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

> If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.

No. Mental illness directly impinges on the executive functions of the brain, which are what one uses to discern reality, weigh options, make plans, and motivate action.

You are simply calling mental illness a moral failure.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#275

Post by shar3333f »

socceroos wrote: post #261
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

I dislike modern notions of abdicating responsibility for one's own actions by pointing to other problems. I believe we're all personally responsible for our output. You can have the worst input in the history of mankind - and this should generate sympathy, understanding and a desire to help - but your output is still entirely your responsibility. The are circumstances where someone can be considered incapable of rea…

Childhood issues with emotional abuse/bullying can & do cause emotional systems to become unbalanced though.

It is not a matter of pure free will. If our emotional brain has been trained to scream at us with anxiety at a specific situation or if it is constantly on high alert it becomes tiring to maintain composure and outbursts may provide an outlet.

Now, a person can recognise this issue and visit a therapist to seek help with their emotional issues. But it first requires them to have recognition of the problem. I do not think it's an exceptional case where people are oblivious of their emotional brain causing them to have an irrational reaction to a situation. In fact I think it is quite common.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#276

Post by MarsAscendant »

tabtab wrote: post #267
MarsAscendant wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except we're supposed to be intelligent. I don't think we are. We sure as hell can be. Seeing bright minds at work is a special kind of inspiration, and its own mental turn-on for me. People aspiring to do well by their desires and talents – that's quite a picture. But it only happens when effort is put forth to surround ourselves – and others around us – with the kind of attitude we seek to promote. Imagine punish…

Being capable of intelligence and being intelligent are not necessarily the same thing. Humans are social animals first, and logical or rational animals second. Our decisions are influenced heavily by (perceived) social factors and self pride/ego such that office politics and pride often end up overriding objective logic. The Dilbert comic strip is close to a documentary in my observation; only slightly exaggerated.

> Being capable of intelligence and being intelligent are not necessarily the same thing.

My argument was against what I saw as a notion that human beings must always express the intelligence we all undoubtably possess, simply because we do. I don't think that's the case. It's not about using straight logic, either: it's about empathy, and the emotions that influence (or even underline) our decisions, and the bigger picture, and whether being angry right now is worth our time...

I think we all can be like that. I think we're not encouraged enough to act that way.

There are certainly selfish motives to every single one of us – and yet, some of us are superb at overriding those motives for the sake of a better act, some struggle to the point of giving up, and others yet barely even tap into the altruistic motives.

I think it all has to do, in half, with the environment we're in. Generally speaking, fear promotes fear, and empathy promotes empathy. There's about 40 to 60% to do with genetics (the number I've seen was 55%), but that much we can't control.

We can control our environments, to an extent.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#277

Post by [deleted] »

socceroos wrote: post #261
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.

I dislike modern notions of abdicating responsibility for one's own actions by pointing to other problems. I believe we're all personally responsible for our output. You can have the worst input in the history of mankind - and this should generate sympathy, understanding and a desire to help - but your output is still entirely your responsibility. The are circumstances where someone can be considered incapable of rea…

[deleted]

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#278

Post by coldtea »

jki275 wrote: post #264
coldtea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different when they consider one another, but not so different to an outsider that has seen places.

Many view "the US" as a homogenous place, culture, and group of people. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I've spent many years living overseas as well as having grown up in the midwest and now living in one of the largest metro areas in the US.

>Many view "the US" as a homogenous place, culture, and group of people.

There are differences in the ways of life between NY and South Dakota, or SF and Alabama, or Denver and New Orleans, but there's also a distinct common national culture and character. Poverty levels, jobs, city vs rural etc change, but culturally all those places are more similar to one another compared to a different country.

France is not homogenous either, in the pedantic sense, but in the same we discuss here it is.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#279

Post by jki275 »

coldtea wrote: post #278
jki275 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many view "the US" as a homogenous place, culture, and group of people. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I've spent many years living overseas as well as having grown up in the midwest and now living in one of the largest metro areas in the US.

> Many view "the US" as a homogenous place, culture, and group of people. There are differences in the ways of life between NY and South Dakota, or SF and Alabama, or Denver and New Orleans, but there's also a distinct common national culture and character. Poverty levels, jobs, city vs rural etc change, but culturally all those places are more similar to one another compared to a different country. France is not hom…

I think it used to be that way.

Culturally today, the difference between the metro areas and the "flyover country" is increasing to the point that people make silly comments like the gp post that betray a total lack of understanding of the rest of the country.

There are some common themes -- but they're becoming less and less common.

Re: If You're Often Angry or Irritable, You May Be Depressed

#280

Post by Anthony-G »

webmobdev wrote: post #273
gabriel34 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

water and coffee only, from dinner to dinner

If I remember right, drinking coffee causes your body to lose water faster - so drinking coffee and water seem kind of contradictory.

While caffeine is a mild diuretic, it’s a myth that drinking coffee (or tea) causes dehydration – something I only learned in the last year or two. The BBC has a decent article on this topic: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140402-are-coffee-and-tea-...
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