Comment by milankragujevic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by milankragujevic | Hacker News Reader

milankragujevic

I am disenhearted by the apparent pseudo-scientific thinking in the comments on this article, and how it'll "be better if you just go workout and eat better", which might work for some people, but not for everyone. If there was a scientific study about changing life habits to stop depression, I'd bet that it would have the same amount of effectiveness or even less than SSRIs. I myself have been "miraculously" cured from depression by the most ridiculed profession in modern medicine, psychiatry, and with "poison" that was supposed to ruin my life and make me kill myself. Basically, aripiprazole and fluoxetine helped me, and help me live life, work and be happy. There was nothing wrong with my life until one day I tried to kill myself, and I was very resistant to treatment because of years of people's anecdotes how psychiatrists were crazy, were "out to get them" and "chemically lobotomize" them. This is bullshit, and we all know it, during my stay in a hospital I have seen many cases of teenagers who were "beyond repair" get "fixed" with medications, and would you look at that, 3-4 years on, they haven't regressed (I kept in contact). Neither have I. It's dangerous to spread conspiracy theories to impressionable and vulnerable minds, and you should think twice before dismissing the whole modern science of psychiatry, just because you fell that hippie life and smoking pot is the way to fix anyone's life. I don't care about the downvotes, but had to get this off my chest.

There are many, many studies on changing life habits (working out) as a methodology to treat depression. It is actually _as effctive_ as SSRI's, and MORE effective for a longterm treatment for depression.*

However, _not all treatments work for everyone_. Certain SSRI's work for some and not others. This also holds for exercise.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26978184 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3674785/

SSRI/SNRI and Life style changes are not mutually exclusive, nor should they be.

Not an expert.

Low energy often comes with depression. So it's not easy as telling a depressed person to "do more exercises".

Depression is "invisible". I like to think that being depressed is like having a broken leg. You can't just get better by yourself, you need proper medical treatment.

Also Not An Expert.

Replace the broken leg with a generic bad back (non surgical) and it's not a bad equivalence.

Medical advice in many cases is to do things which hurt (exercise, stretching, lose weight) otherwise the back won't get better, but doing nothing will almost certainly lead to stagnation or a worsening of the condition. You can take pills which may reduce the pain, but those are not really a long term solution on their own.

I don't wish to diminish how hard it is (in either case, intentionally causing yourself discomfort is utterly exhausting in every way). It often is both possible and beneficial so be wary of writing off a school of thought entirely.

Being rich won't solve all of your problems. But wealth/funding does solve some problems, and reduces most of the rest by orders of magnitude.

In the same way, being in good physical shape, eating healthful foods, sleeping well every night, and not being stressed won't solve every medical problem. But a dependable and healthy body does solve some problems directly, and reduces most of the rest by orders of magnitude.

I would say wealth not only reduces but eliminates a lot of the problems for an average person.

Every week there's a study that being poor causes a lot of damage to your body (on the DNA level IIRC).

A good friend killed himself after his doctors put him on meds. We will never know what really happened but it turns out that lots of psychiatric medications first become "effective" in the "drive" department rather than lighten depression syndromes. Not a good dynamic at all when you are already in a suicidal state.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824975/

Not saying these meds don't work, they actually might work "too well" in some ways and that surveillance of and constant checking-in with patients is very important especially at the beginning and during periods after stopping treatment.

sounds like you have some valuable experience to share, but it would be helpful to breakdown how much you are a disagreeing with the article and how much you are disagreeing with tom cruise style psychiatry denial.

clearly there have been people helped by psychiatry, but clearly a lot of it has been debunked because, not a surprise, science is supposed to debunk itself and self-correct and iterate to better things.

so while in general it’s a losing proposition to say the field has no value, we need to separate the concept of science from specifics of how it’s practiced in particular cases. this is not a black and white issue. some drugs and practices and practitioners can be life saving while others are the opposite.

it would be interesting to know how right this article gets things for the claims it makes.

Bice bice jarane!

Thanks for writing this!

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