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Comment by slfnflctd | Hacker News Reader

> 31 percent of those receiving benefits have mental disorders

This has got to be a major contributing factor. Add in those with undiagnosed psych problems, and I'm sure it would stand out even more. [Of course, maybe they would be balanced out by the 'fakers'-- but that is almost equally alarming, and itself suggests all kinds of deeper problems.]

Both reducing the stigma of and increasing access to mental health care are hugely important right now. Most people with such issues are perfectly capable of being productive employees-- but not if they are marginalized through terrible hiring processes, workplace 'social politics' and inflexible, unsympathetic (or simply incompetent) management. A robust jobs program could certainly help.

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Unemployment causes depression and other types of mental reactions that are classified as disorders or diseases.

It could be argued that it's not unemployment itself that causes depression, but the implications and effects of unemployment. If one could magically find independence, social acceptance, and financial support without employment, I suspect most of the ill effects of unemployment would disappear.

Ideally, something like Basic Income. In the UK the means testing for benefits if you find yourself out of work has resulted in numerous suicides:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-sm...

As someone who has spent significant amounts of time 'funemployed', I have to disagree.

There's a great line from Madmen about people that retire early. They play golf, they go to parties and then they die.

I think the trick might be treating "work" and "employment" as separate concepts. Systematically unemployed people might find fulfillment working on things they decide for themselves are worth the effort.

Indeed. I know so many people (from support groups) who say they are afraid of mentioning their mental condition to their employer for fear of effects of the social stigma from their superiors and the impact on their career.

If that many people are supposed to have mental 'disorders', perhaps the problem is really those wielding the alleged definition.

Not really, a diagnosis of a mental disorder isn't an attempt to slur a person, it's recognition that they have behavior patterns that inhibit their ability to engage with society. That's something that can be assessed pretty objectively.

I did not say that, and I agree with you. However, I disagree that any majority has the right to force others to 'engage with society' on their own terms or be excluded, which is often basically what allegations of 'mental illness' are.

The exclusion can happen without any use of force, and a lot of outreach programs focus on reducing the exclusion, not on forcing normative behaviors.

Just because I give you a hug and a cup of coffee doesn't mean I don't want to enslave you to do my bidding. Society kind of acts like this, although individual human actors don't necessarily perceive themselves as contributing.

Have you ever gone through the process of being so mentally ill you can't work? It's quite difficult and not something one undergoes just because they want free money. It's dehumanizing and degrading to have to list all these ways you literally can't function like a mentally healthy human being. I know people who frankly have to choose between that and homelessness. To imply there's nothing wrong with these people and in fact the problem lies with the idea of mental disorders existing expresses to me a perhaps lack of exposure or understanding of people who are sick.

Hey I'm not claiming nobody's sick, just that if that many people have problems functioning in society then society's probably a big part of the problem.

Your rhetoric implies an allegation of sickness rather than them actually being sick. I'm not going to deny that society may have contributing factors such as stigma or how society deals with traumatized individuals, but to imply that that many people being that sick is to be prescribed to an issue with the definition of being mentally ill strikes me as strange.

Depression really is more akin to a symptom than a disease. There aren't even clearly defined biomarkers that are associated with this cluster of symptoms we call depression.

In fact, you claimed that many of the people diagnosed are actually fine. Please revise or walk back your statement if you want, but don't deny the plain meaning of your words.

I implied that perhaps their particular mental configurations, different as they are, should perhaps not be considered abnormal and in fact this is a false stigma of society. I did not imply any value judgement about their mental configurations.

Your attitude, were it to be adopted as conventional wisdom, would deprive huge numbers of people of medical treatment that dramatically improves their lives. Most DSM definitions stipulate something similar to: "There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, academic or occupational functioning". If people seek help for such conditions, they should have their concerns taken seriously and be provided the necessary treatment. It's not helpful to simply suggest perhaps it's natural for some people to be morbidly depressed or disconnected from reality.

Not once did I suggest that people were not ill, merely that a society's consideration of a high proportion of its people as ill is a symptom of the society more than the individuals. The baseline assumption in your polemic that people should center their lives around "social, academic or occupational functioning" is actually highly offensive to some, including myself.

It is perfectly natural.

Try taking some social animal like a bonobo, and sticking it in a horrible cage in solitary confinement, and maybe poke it with a cattle prod now and then for extra measure. Do you think it's going to be a perfectly happy little ape? No, it's going to become morbidly depressed or disconnected from reality. There's nothing wrong with the bonobo; the problem is with his environment. The bonobo doesn't need anti-depressants, he needs to be put back into his healthy bonobo society in the forest and not kept in a cage and zapped with a cattle prod.

Most mental health treatments are just band-aids, just like dosing a tortured ape on anti-depressants so he doesn't have to deal with the suffering he's being forced to endure.

> It's dehumanizing and degrading to have to list all these ways you literally can't function

I couldn't even imagine going through such a process when I was at my worst. It wouldn't have happened unless someone physically forced me to do it. I actually would have ended up 'choosing' to be homeless (or dead) if it wasn't for the care of friends and family.

Your knee-jerk response to this statistic is symptomatic of the stygma attatched to mental illness in our society. If this was a statistic on a viral infection, would you be so doubtful?

This attitude is what keeps people from being willing to seek help when they suffer from depression or suicidal thoughts for fear that skeptics will judge them as faking or lacking character. As someone who lived for over ten years with multiple undiagnosed mental disorders and suffered significant, unnecesary setbacks as a result, I believe we still have a ways to go before mental health is treated with the appropriate amount of concern.

I think you misread my comments. I am just saying that when a fairly large percentage of the population is considered 'mentally ill' then they're probably not ill at all, they're just having a perfectly reasonable response to a completely screwed up society. I mean objectively the binary view of "sick" and "healthy" is wrong for starters. Also objectively, many societies don't have these issues or at least don't have these issues to nearly the rates that the US or Japan does... what does that you tell you about so-called (capitalist) "development" in a society? Maybe something, maybe nothing. You be the judge. Not that anyone asked, but I personally believe the whole antidepressant epidemic in the US (and other places, like Denmark, the self-reported happiest country on earth) is a symptom of a fundamental breakdown in the community aspects of society and a pervasive, deep-seated sense of mental rudderlessness infecting the more vulnerable parts of the population (lower socioeconomic status, indebted/mortgaged workers, isolated lifestyle individuals, the elderly) as a result.

> the whole antidepressant epidemic in the US (and other places, like Denmark, the self-reported happiest country on earth) is a symptom of a fundamental breakdown in the community aspects of society and a pervasive, deep-seated sense of mental rudderlessness infecting the more vulnerable parts of the population

That causes damage. Turning your ankle or pulling a muscle might be more obvious, because it's purely physical, but there isn't as much difference as you think.

There have been studies that show that long term unemployment causes permanent changes to a persons personality, one not easily healed by getting a new job[1]. These modifications to thinking and increased stress levels lead to physical changes (and argumentatively decay). Pointing out the source of the problem in society does not change the fact that it isn't mental illness. Quite on the contrary, giving a source is similar to pointing at a poisoned well and saying "That's why everyone is sick.", but then afterwards saying nobody is really sick because we all know the well is poisoned.

[1]: http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/25/long-term-unemployme...

Your analogy about the poisoned well is good, but I think what you're missing is that, I believe, the OP's point is that merely treating people with mental disorders is not the right solution. In your well example, if you have a poisoned well making everyone sick, the solution is NOT to treat everyone for poisoning, and continue drinking the water! Instead, you find a new well, or figure out how to un-poison the well (obviously, in the meantime you treat the people currently poisoned, but first and foremost you don't keep drinking poisoned water). Similarly here, the solution is not to keep going with our current broken society, but to fix the society so that people aren't being made mentally ill by it.

Wholly agree that mental illness should be taken seriously. Having been in personal valley an having sought help, I must say my encounter with the mental health world has been so staggeringly disappointing, with so little science on display. The experience has been like stepping into the church of some religion you haven't been indoctrinated into, instantly apparent how little connection to logic or reality the dogma possesses.

The only reason not to downvote, is to ensure that the rebuttal to this common attitude remains highly visible.

The general population has an incidence rate of around 1:5 every year. Lifetime incidence is 1:2. That its between the two in the chronic unemployed isn't at all surprising.

The group is probably overrepresented in suicide stats too.

well i can see those replying to you completely ignore the amount of money involved in diagnosing such issues. it is similar to handing out handicap placards, there is so much money to be had from various programs that its profitable for both hospital and even the patients.

worse the system discourages not giving patients the designation they want because doctors are routinely subject to surveys that must come back positive, by the very patients they serve

this is not to say there are not people with mental disorders but the vagueness of some disorders leads to a lot of abuse and in some cases its because people figure they don't have to deal with it, life in general, its not their fault, its far easier to take that declaration of disorder and put the blame there and not change lifestyle, job, or habits.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion instead of attacking my (apparently much misinterpreted) statement. There is a systemic problem with the bureaucracy around health in many countries, and western countries have diagnosed huge amounts of mental 'disorders' from children to adults in the past few decades. There is certainly a profit motive. However, there is also a reality that in an increasingly urbanized/automated/electronic communication based society, maintaining meaningful human relationships, a sense of self-worth and the will to often meaningless employment is clearly becoming gradually more and more difficult for many people. This is what I refer to when I suggest that the number of so-called mentally ill is perhaps only indicative of a problem of society. I think, in fact, that the people who respond to this reality with despondent depressive demotivation and feelings of helplessness, paranoia and anxiety are actually extremely rational. Perhaps more rational than the majority.

> mental 'disorders'

The DSM has certainly done its share of damage, I have to say. I think we'd agree on that. I'm not even sure it's done more good than harm.

You keep coming back to this being a problem with our social structure, and honestly I do suspect it's probably the biggest factor. This is why I support Basic Income (with a non-ludicrous rollout, and plenty of balancing along the way).

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