Burnout vs. Major Depressive Disorder (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Burnout vs. Major Depressive Disorder (2014)

academia.edu

38 pointsspking10 comments

So many things wrong with this (beyond the typos, misstatements of science, and so forth) it's hard to know where to begin.

Here's a simple algorithm: if you feel lousy (=sad, flat/unmotivated, fatigued, anxious) for at least a couple of weeks AND these symptoms are interfering with your life/causing you to change your behavior, OR you're having thoughts of death/suicide, talk to a professional. Could be an MD/RN or psychologist or social worker.

Thought experiment: you do some sort of asinine questionnaire like this one and it says you're experiencing burnout. You would... try to make changes AND seek treatment if needed. Conversely, it says you're experiencing depression. You would... try to make changes AND seek treatment if needed.

Sorry to be cranky, but this stuff presses my (professional) buttons.

Sounds like a great idea but when you feel that crappy it's going to be almost impossible to arrange that. The last time I was seriously depressed I actually managed to call a few places, soonest anyone could see me was like three months out. I just ended up drinking very heavily, fortunately that seemed to work.

I hope #2 meant to say "shift of environment" and not "shit of environment." Although, sometimes I look around when feeling burnt out and can't help but feel my environment is just that!

The terrible grammar, spelling, and proofreading do not give me all that much confidence in the writer.

Everyone likes to say things like this, but is there actually data to back out up? Also, do you really need to have confidence in a writer? Shouldn't the arguments be able to stand for themselves?

The logic behind it is that if you’ve done a sloppy job with the presentation of your arguments, it becomes likelier that you’ve also cut corners during the research phase. It’s not about the quality of the prose, but about the lack of effort for something so easily fixable (a software spellchecker will catch the most egregious mistakes).

I’m not aware of any hard data on the matter, but as you say, it seems like most people are concerned by this and yet the author did nothing about it, further cementing the careless attitude.

To be perfectly clear, my comment is a generalisation to answer your point, not a critique of this particular author or their work (I haven’t read it).

An effective argument involves not only logos but ethos and pathos as well.

Ugh. Anyone want to post a PDF link, as opposed to the "give us your account handles so we know who's downloading this" technique?

https://web.archive.org/web/20170811212743/http://www.burnou...

This article is so outrageous. These "categories" show such a limited and misinformed understanding about humans, which definitely does not take into account scientific literature. This makes me angry also, because it is articles like these make people wary of seeking help when they need it (rightfully, there ARE so many bad therapists and bad information out there).

If anyone wants to have an informed conversation with me about these topics, DM me on twitter @AzimuthPsych. Happy to provide useful and evidence based information.

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