Conversation

Notices

1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 07:58:41 EST clacke
   Ignore the attention-seeking headline (even if it made me click, if with an exasperated "ugh, what kind of nonsense is behind this link?").
   
   So, *part* of the puzzle of depression *may* be that one's life actually objectively sucked at some point, and one hasn't received the support necessary to process that, and instead internalized the externally-induced trauma.
   
   *If* this is the case, I believe our "think positive" society is making this ten times worse, by putting even more of the blame on the individual, and making it seem like we are supposed to be fully in control of our lives.
   
   We are not in control of our lives. We are not even in control of our children's lives. Shit just keeps happening all the time, and if we're lucky we get good shit happening to us. If we don't, that may mean we messed up and we suck, but it's more likely that we just had bad shit happen to us and that's life.
   
   https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-hari-depression-causes_us_5a6a144de4b0ddb658c46a21
   
   Stoicism man. Maybe this is why religion sometimes works, because you get someone else to blame. But you don't have to blame yourself, or God, or anyone. Just, you know, do what you can that you believe would affect the outcome, and then accept the outcome that happens to be the result.
   
   But that's like ... Just another, albeit more constructive, version of "think happy thoughts", in that it says "you can fix this". So I'm sorry for that. But on the other hand, if you can't, who can?
   
   I think there's a delineation between personal responsibility and personal blame here. And at some part of the core of the message is that it's ok to mess up. Try again tomorrow. You probably don't suck, it just didn't work out today.
   1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 08:04:07 EST clacke

      in reply to
      I'm skirting dangerously close to self-help talk here. Blaming the victim, basing conclusion on survivor bias, the whole package. Do feel free to tell me I'm an idiot, because I really don't get this stuff, I'm just thinking out loud based on my own experiences and observations.
      
      I'm trying to be sensitive, but I don't know what your sore points are or even how it feels to be far down the pit of despair. I don't require of you to educate me, your spoons are yours to manage, I'm just saying I really 100% don't mind if you tell me I'm a dick or just a fool, and I would really appreciate it if you tell me how or why.
      1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 06:34:19 EST clacke

         in reply to
         @moonman @cereal @shpuld @phildobangnz @hugoestr @tomas @dewoo
         
         I want to be very careful when discussing this, because I certainly don't want a single soul to think "Tom Cruise was right all along!".
         
         Apparently this was discussed in the listener's feedback section on SGU recently, and I will share two links from the shownotes.
         
         I read https://social.heldscal.la/url/1203512 and it is a longer account by the same author and from the same book, and has even more of a True Believer and This One Weird Trick warning bells on it. It doesn't really add anything new to the model, but it tells you a bit more about where the author comes from and mentions more about the sources.
         
         https://social.heldscal.la/url/1206708 is a rebuttal tonyet another post by the author, which I will also find and post. Haven't read the rebuttal yet.
         
         Haven't listened to https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/655 yet.
         1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 06:38:46 EST clacke

            in reply to
            It's a bit confusing, but it seems the The Guardian online piece by Hari is the paper The Observer piece?
         2. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 07:09:44 EST clacke

            in reply to
            @moonman @phildobangnz @tomas @shpuld @cereal @hugoestr
            
            Ok, the rebuttal says pretty much what we have hinted at here. The headlines and the book are too sensational, and the image of the psychiatrist as a pure pill-pusher who doesn't get psychology is a strawman.
            
            The worst exaggeration in Hari's article is this:
            
            > Now, if your baby dies at 10am, your doctor can diagnose you with a mental illness at 10.01am and start drugging you straight away.
            
            Sure, maybe we need to accept some hyperbole, but this is pretty extreme and he even contradicts himself earlier in the article:
            
            > For a doctor to conclude you were depressed, you had to show five of these symptoms over several weeks.
            
            Plus that the DSM generally is meant to be relied on for defining a disorder only if your issues interfere with your ability to live a normal life, it's never just the indications listed in the manual.
            
            ----
            
            There is a discussion to be had about overreliance on medication, and also on bad pharma practices regarding publishing, but the rebuttal indicates that maybe it starts better with scientific skeptics like Goldacres piece from 2008 [0] than with journalists with a reputation for the sensational. Also the author puffs their own recent piece on the topic. [1]
            
            I read neither of these yet:
            
            [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/26/badscience
            [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2017/jul/10/how-do-antidepressants-actually-work
            1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 07:18:42 EST clacke

               in reply to
               The Goldacre piece from a decade ago says that the pure serotonin model is more of a media phenomenon than a thing of actual medical practice and that depression is complicated.
               1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 07:28:49 EST clacke

                  in reply to
                  Burnetts article says that it's complicated and seems to confirm my impression thay the pill-pushing due to time and money constraints is worse in the US than in the UK and that the UK is among the worse in Europe.
                  
                  I get the impression that Burnetts "The Idiot Brain" would be a better read than Hari's "Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions".
                  1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 07:54:17 EST clacke

                     in reply to
                     The letter is 37 mins into the episode.
                     1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 08:14:57 EST clacke

                        in reply to
                        Novella's blog saws Hari off at the ankles. Where Hari sees a malicious removal of the legalese grief exception, Novella points out that it was really converted into a wider portal paragraph that aims to be more humane and smarter than "[within six months after personal loss, these symptoms are grief, not depression]".
                        
                        https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-mental-illness-denial/
         3. Sim Bot (sim@sealion.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 07:06:27 EST Sim Bot

            in reply to
            @clacke His account is interesting, and I do think there is something in it. I doubt the pills are going to help if the main problem isn't addressed. There aren't happy pills. Life is life. But as I said before... I want to say more but I can't find the words to say.
            
            But someone once told me something along the lines, "You're having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation." I think that is closer than buying into this notion about lacking serotonin, especially when there are no tests done to conclude what the levels are. I also read that the pills don't work for most people, and they certainly didn't work for me.
   2. Hugo Estrada (hugoestr@functional.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 08:25:02 EST Hugo Estrada

      in reply to

      @clacke I agree with the main point.

      Yes, I agree. We don't understand mental illness, and this bothers us. We fear lack of explanation and control. Mental health is something that scares us because it breaks the illusion of our agency.

      We can choose to be empathetic. Yet empathy requires the courage to imagine yourself as a person with mental health problems, and accepting that under the right circumstances, that can be you.

   3. I'M CEREAL U GUISE (cereal@sealion.club)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 08:26:13 EST I'M CEREAL U GUISE

      in reply to
      @clacke one of the major selling points of a practical stoicism book I read was to internalize goals.
      The outcome of making an effort is a nice thing if it worked out, but given you as a single entity amount to so little in a system as huge as a society or a world, even, or just something small because of so many pieces being in play, that ultimately, you're much better off setting your goals like "do your best to make it happen", not "it must happen".
      Because you're just putting factors beyond your universe of direct influence on your bad side. Combined with negative visualization ("imagine life without what makes it easier") I've had some success on the worst of days.
      Also, kittens.
      1. clacke (clacke@social.heldscal.la)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 09:01:15 EST clacke

         in reply to
         @cereal Yeah, negative thinking is probably a good exercise as well.
         
         I do it to some extent, but only in my self-taught intuitive way, not in any structured way.
   4. Tomas SA2TMS (tomas@social.umeahackerspace.se)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2018 18:37:45 EST Tomas SA2TMS

      in reply to
      Interesting read. Just bullying or other "normal" childhood garbage could explain depression in many cases