As these kind of stories are so popular on HN, I recently started curating a list at https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression
I hope it helps someone one day.
I hope it helps someone one day.
If you're suffering from depression, you're likely in partial denial. Going to a doctor represents a big change, and a big acknowledgement. Techniques like 'getting sunlight' and 'doing exercise' are infinitely more attractive - and infinitely more likely to degrade into new ways of beating yourself up and blaming yourself for your medical condition.
Some people can deal with depression with meditation, self-care, and better routine. Many, however, cannot. Folk remedies are like mirages for this second group - and they put people in a circle of denial, incomplete action, and self-blame, where they try to solve their illness with ultimately ineffective remedies, then blame themselves for the ineffectiveness of the treatment.
Pills, doctors, and psychiatrists are scary. As long as a depressed person believes there's a more normal option, that's what they'll go for. So this whole smorgsaboard of things that might help somebody somehow are really just a bunch of chimeras that keep people living in hell.
I know this because I've done this. I went through a period of simply trying everything anybody recommended, no matter how ridiculous. Predictably, nothing worked. Drugs work. Therapy works. Asking a doctor what they recommend works. Random studies you read on the internet by people who may or may not have had the same kind of depression you have, with p-values of like, 0.1, do not work, and do not help.
Edit: I would also like to clarify that if you feel depressed you should absolutely go to a doctor and try out therapy. If you don't want to do this, you need to ask yourself why you wouldn't want to go to see the people who are most qualified to help you. Is it simply because you actually don't believe a doctor or therapist can help you or is it because you feel your case is hopeless? In either case, I would say then that you have nothing to lose and you might as well go try it out anyway, just in case you are wrong. If you're right, you can have the satisfaction of feeling vindicated. If you're wrong, you'll feel better. It's a win-win.
If the reason you don't want professional help is that you are ashamed someone may find out, then you need to start looking at the problem a bit more objectively. You simply have a problem that needs fixing, why not get the best people to help you fix it? And another point, if someone else judges you for wanting to feel better and have more to offer for everyone else around you, should you really give their judgement much weight? If neither of these help, maybe for right now you can just ask yourself if the shame you're predicting you'll feel in the short run is a cheap enough price to pay to feel better in the long run. I bet it is.
Lastly, if you're feeling like getting professional help is just too much effort, it can help to break things up in to steps. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down a plan to get help. Maybe step one of the plan is you just jump on Google and find a doctor or therapist near you. Step 2 can be to call and book an appointment, step 3 can be to write down exactly what you want to discuss in your visit, step 4 can be planning how to get to the appointment (maybe plan to ask someone close for a ride or take a taxi if driving or walking there is too much), and so on. Each time you complete a step, just cross it out. With each step completed, you're on your way to feeling better and you can feel a sense of accomplishment.
People really overestimate the organizational capacity of somebody in deep depression. Getting a doctor's appointment, showing up, then talking honestly about your problems is really hard. It's doubly hard if you think you have alternatives.
Getting medical help is a really big step. Taking St-John's Wort, or eating more cumin, isn't. And that would be great if they were equivalent. But for a lot of people, they absolutely aren't. Otherwise doctors would prescribe exercise and sunlight.
I'd be really happy if every advice column on depression just told people to go to a doctor. I mean, jesus, imagine if somebody put a github repo up about how to self-treat cholera! Depression is really dangerous. It kills a lot of people. If you have it, you should talk to a professional - not read random studies that are probably p-hacking anyway.
1) I have suffered from and lived with sufferers of depression for my whole life. It is rare for me to say so on a public forum, but there it is.
2) I have been in a dangerous place and sought medical help. I was prescribed drugs which had catastrophic side-effects on me, and which persisted for years after I went through the horrible withdrawal process that the said drug causes. The drug was closer to killing me than the depression. I taught myself a kind of CBT (I didn't know it was called that back then) and I have been coping drug free for nearly two decades.
3) In the UK mental-health services are barely existent except for those in the most extreme circumstances, after nearly a decade of government cuts. Doctors prescribe drugs because that is all they can do. They refer you to counseling, but you face months of wait. Anecdotally it seems that most depression suffers never get the therapy that may really help them. Much of this is cultural in that somehow in 2018 people still think depression is not a real disease.
4) These stories are extremely popular on HN, and often make it to the front page, which suggests there is a demand.
> probably p-hacking anyway.
5) What an absurd slur.
> doctors would prescribe exercise and sunlight
6) They most certainly do exactly this. I have heard it with my own ears. A doctor told a person I know that they should try St. Johns Wort before risking anti-depressents.
> jesus, imagine if somebody put a github repo up about how to self-treat cholera!
7) Is a strawman, but since you brought it up, prevention of Cholera is most definitely a self-help exercise of some worth. I believe the main treatment is 'hydration' btw. I urge all Cholera suffers who are able to to seek out medical attention, for those with no access to it, hydration would seem like a valuable self-help technique.
> I'd be really happy if every advice column on depression just told people to go to a doctor
8) This list does that in the opening section. It suggests discussing the articles with a doctor too.
> I went through a period of simply trying everything anybody recommended, no matter how ridiculous
9) The antithesis of researching a list of articles and being well informed when you chose to visit your medical professional to discuss it with them. If you are in the frame of mind to try snake-oil, I seriously doubt a list like this would make any difference either way.
10) Not all depression sufferers are 'cured' by their doctor. Not all react well (or at all) to drugs. Everyone I know who has learned to manage their depression has (once they have got through the denial) done it through lifestyle changes, CBT, lighting, exercise etc. If you search through the links you will find novel drug therapies which are helping people (dramatically) who have had no benefit at all from existing medicine, and have been shown to do so in a peer reviewed study (before you repeat that slur). If a close family member of mine was in that situation I have no doubt at all that I would be keen for them to find out about it and go and discuss it with their doctor.
11) I don't feel the need to protect anyone from information.
However, I don't think reading articles, however scientific, is a substitute for five years of training to be a psychiatrist or psychologist - and if you don't think p-hacking is endemic in this space, I have a bridge to sell you.
I can't stop you doing what you are doing. But if you tell somebody who has cholera that 'drinking water' was an alternative to going to a doctor, and they died, you'd go to prison. If even one person takes your advice, against the scientific consensus that anti-depressants work, tries to 'hack' their depression with your 'alternatives', you'll be partially responsible for the outcome.
Ultimately, the question is: are you confident enough of your psychiatric/psychological credentials to offer advice about a life-threatening condition?
Because that is what you are doing.
Why do you keep pushing this line? The page quite clearly says on line 4 and line 6 that you should talk to a doctor. It even suggests discussing the listed things with a doctor.
If a doctor prescribed me a statin to help with my cholesterol, then I went away and read up and found that reducing the amount of bacon I was eating would also help, then I went back and discussed that with my doctor, am I better or worse off?
If I delete my Github account right now does the information I linked to go away? In lots of cases I have linked to the discussion rather than the article, where the extraordinarily critical HN crowd have pulled the article apart, searched for p-hacking and other frauds and discussed any merits. Is that better or worse than the tabloid stories that abound on health? I don't see how more information about your condition could be a bad thing?
"Nutrient Power: by William J. Walsh" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14603192-nutrient-power
If found it via this article: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/02/bill-sardi/weaning-away-...
"Dr. Walsh concludes, after years of investigation, that a gene-altering process called methylation (explained below) is involved in 70% of serious psychiatric conditions. That means it will soon be possible to molecularly reverse chronic mental problems. As brain science advances, the use of psychiatric drugs will gradually become obsolete since most mental disorders involve disturbances or imbalances of essential nutrients that alter brain function."
The study PDF says that it's not clear why there's a correlation with Vitamin D deficiency but one explanation might be that people stay inside.
Regarding drugs, actually people with a latent "sleeping" schizophrenia can get a psychosis even from soft drugs like Marijuana. Marijuana is a lightly psychedelic drugs, Magic Mushrooms even more so.
At least you should put around a giant disclaimer and possibly also link to websites like erowid.org which go into a lot of detail, I guess they should also have details about complications, safer use etc.
I don't think there are any recommendations in the list at all, just a list of reading materials to discuss with your doctor
"Studies in recent years have shown MBCT to be 43 per cent effective in reducing relapse in sufferers of depression—as effective as antidepressants."
The problem I have with your list is that it treats depression as a black box, and the solution is to throw random things at it until something sticks. There are things that can be done to better identify underlying causes. For example, your list should touch on deficiencies in iron and B12. Your symptoms can also be a clue as to which neurotransmitters are involved.
Solutions need to tie back to causes. Vitamin D supplements are useful if you have a substantial Vitamin D deficiency. All the serotonin supplements in the world aren't going to help if your issue isn't a shortage of serotonin or its precursors. Understanding how different solutions relate to causes (and therefore relate to each other) gives you a smarter way to approach solutions.
Full disclosure.. my psychiatrist wife and I are working on a book to help people approach mental health care in a more systematic way, trying to take the magic black box out of it. A big part is also on how you can best work with the resources you have available (we're in Canada, so different but comparable range of limitations as in the UK).
However that is just a book, and it doesn't even make a big deal out of 5-HTP in particular. I guess that's how I found out about it though. There are a number of supplements people take to tackle their own ailments including depression, and that is one of them.
There's a reddit community /r/nootropics which discusses mood-altering supplements a lot.