I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxiety. I Am Not Ashamed

Yeah, that is just pandering to a crowd that loves this trendy self-abasement nonsense, like white guilt, which is just another version of original sin. It's a con as old as time. While I don't think it's the root cause of his depression, the level of negativity in language like that certainly can't help his self-esteem.

Its a shame when someone looks solely at a checklist with nothing to do with environment to determine how difficult someone's life has been. Its even worse when they use it to evaluate their own problems or the problems of others. I often think this is a contributor to our own mental health and causes us to cause pain to others because we are blinded to the condition versus what a checklist says they should be.

It also might explain the absolute vitriol that comes from Mr. Wheaton's twitter feed. I really believe if you rage against other people by calling them subhumans it reflects on your own condition. You cannot stay happy with yourself if you put malice into the world at such high levels. Not everyone you disagree with is automatically evil of the highest order. Too many people stare into an abyss of their own making that prevents proper healing of their own soul.

I suffer from depression and anxiety. I take medication, and it helps big time. There's no doubt it's a physical phenomenon.

However, it seems easy these days to forget that our lifestyle and choices also have a dramatic effect on our mental well-being.

This bit that you've quoted from Mr. Wheaton sets off an alarm in my head: he may be a member of the social constructionism / extreme relativism cult, which is the kind of belief system and lifestyle which could depress anyone given enough time and immersion. The amount of control that the true believers of this ideology attempt to exert over human nature is unsustainable, and almost certainly leads to strained relationships, moral confusion, poor judgment, and so on.

In other words, I think Wil's got problems other than just clinical depression and anxiety. He may benefit from taking a hard look at his beliefs and challenging them a bit.

I wonder how much, if any, of depression or anxiety could be linked to having such a low opinion of what you achieved. Whether or not his assertion is true, I don't understand how that would help anyone's psyche.

> as a white, heterosexual, cisgender man in America, I live life on the lowest difficulty setting >What a pathetic, and wholly incorrect thing to say.

It's disgusting.

We have the luxury of operating at much higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs than generations past. I would much rather worry about whether my life truly matters than worry about whether my life will immediately come to an end if I can't kill or grow enough food. Depression was probably always an issue, today we just have the privilege of it being the most pressing problem for many of us.

There is a cartoon where a scientist travels to the future and finds the world has become an utopia. A friendly host shows the scientist the wonders of his world, and then says something like "no one is poor or hungry anymore, we have everything to cover everyone's needs, even a beautiful house for each". The scientists asks "Why not two houses?". The end panel is the scientist getting back into his machine while a nuclear mushroom looms in the background.

My point is, people doesn't seem to be made to be fully happy. Yes, we enjoy the high of happiness, but soon we come down and take it for granted, then something else we don't have is what will make us happy. I think this an asset, what makes us human and what encourages us to strive for something more. This is also a liability, as we easily lose perspective and purpose.

This is just my personal perspective for the most part, but I think a lot of the anxiety I feel stems from innate, primal survival instincts that have no real need anymore in my life position. For instance even though I could support myself and probably a small family on my current compensation, but I still feel the urge to get a raise. I still worry about my motorcycle getting stolen off the street even though it's a leisure vehicle and is a used, small bike that costs less than what I make in a week. Neither failing to get a good raise nor having my motorcycle stolen has any significant impact on my basic needs (heck, the latter would statistically improve it), but I think a primal urge to acquire and keep resources fueling my anxiety over these things.

These urges used to be necessary - the cave man that didn't worry about feeding himself and didn't worry about having his stuff stolen probably had a tougher time surviving - but I think the urges remain but there's no real outlet in many developed parts of the world.

As an addendum, I think a good way to mitigate this is to find things that satisfy these urges when possible, and be serenely introspective about the things you can't. When I stress out about material resource, I calculate how long I can live comfortably with no income and try to tangibly see hoe wide my safety net is (granted, this is not something that may result in reduced stress for everyone). But some things just need to be accepted as a part of myself. For instance when I feel the temptation to sleep with other women I just have to accept that this a part of an innate instinct to impregnate as many women as possible, instilled through hundreds of millennia of evolution in a society vastly different from the one I currently live in.

Peasants in a feudal society are constantly getting abused by the “nobles”. That is: beaten, robbed, property destroyed, forced into involuntary labor, tortured, raped, killed, often just for looking at one of the nobles the wrong way or for sport. Life was precarious, and everyone was constantly stressed about it.

Not to mention famine was common, and parents would e.g. go hungry for long stretches of time so their kids could subsist on half-rations of nutrient-poor staples. In such an environment, domestic violence is common, and it is difficult to make any kind of long-term plans. You just try to survive day by day.

Then there’s also literally backbreaking labor, poor sanitation, poor healthcare, parasites, the equivalent of smoking a few packs a day by sleeping next to a wood fire, infant mortality of >50%, and so on.

Source: this stuff was still rampant in the 1960s in rural southern Mexico, and still happens today in many countries around the world. You can still interview people who grew up with that kind of terror.

Back during WW1, what we now know as PTSD was called "Shell Shock". I wonder what the depression and anxiety rates would be if we used modern psychiatric diagnosis techniques against say, a WW1 soldier, or maybe a medieval peasant.

i don’t think we are anywhere close to having the requisite tools for such a comparison. the subjective conscious experience is complicated.

>We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago.

If by luxuries we mean trinkets, then yes.

But power is also a luxury, and kings had it.

A nice house is also a luxury, and kings had the best (and actually, several).

Free time is the biggest luxury of all, and kings had it (what with personal cooks, a ton of attending stuff, etc).

The ability to influence your society is a luxury, and kings had it in spades.

A sense of purpose is also a luxury, and kings had it handed to them (e.g. leading their nation, etc).

Luxury is also comparative, and you don't miss what you don't even know (e.g. a 16th century king wouldn't miss not having internet). On that comparative level, to their peers, kings were above everybody else.

So, yeah, they didn't have Advil and iPhones, but their lives could be very much better than someone who had.

Hunter gatherers didn't necessarily suffer that much. Sure, they faced a lot of environmental challenges like bugs, a lack of air conditioning, hunger, and serious diseases like malaria and smallpox, but they arguably had much easier social customs than we do now.

There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

These days being homeless is illegal and they face a lot of harassment. You are forced to conform and commute to a job to pay for a bed to sleep in.

I think we exchanged physical suffering for emotional suffering, but maybe its about the same.

Wheaton needs to lift heavy. Exercise is known to cure male depression and many people on HN (myself included) can testify to it's effectiveness and the positive outcome in their lives.

It's nice there are some treatments now, however modest.

Also nice is that the illness is sufficiently accepted that a guy who works on TV can talk about it publicly (though perhaps uniquely and I suppose with some risk)

The notion that we live better than the kings of old is absurd. Even materially one can ask Where is my castle? where are my tracks of land? where are my ships and armies? Where is my gold and gems? Where are my servants and slaves?

> hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare?

I think as a man you have evolutionary pressure to spread your seed as much as possible, that pressure manifests itself as depression. I don't think that has changed.

Relevant background:I'm a psychiatrist.

"Talking about it" and "talking with a therapist" are different, and a good therapist using an evidence-based approach to therapy is effective. Evidence-based therapies are different than "chatting with a buddy."

That said, finding a good and well-trained therapist is often difficult. In approximately 10% of people, psychotherapy makes things worse rather than better. Sleep hygiene and regular exercise are always a good idea, and in some cases medication is worth considering.

I think you're only thinking that because they're letting it be more visible in order to get support.

The alternative is that they put on a mask to function in society, because they don't want to be a burden, all the while dying inside...

Until they unexpectedly disappear, because they've committed suicide.

Anecdotal evidence is that it has changed my life. It may not work for everyone. But it'll probably be effective if you want it to be.

As regarding "making things worse"... well, sometimes it might. For example, say over the years you've developed strategies for coping with depression that involve angry outbursts. Getting into therapy to help with the angry outbursts may "reveal" the underlying depression for which those coping strategies were developed.

Therapy isn't a production line. Everyone is different. You are paying a mental health professional to get to know you as well as you feel comfortable with, and collaborate with you on treatment for what you're there for.

I have some level of social anxiety and it helped me a lot to talk to someone who accepted it as a real thing. Previously my experience was that people wouldn't want to hear how I felt and just told me "go out, talk to a few people and have fun".

I think it's the same for depression. It's nice to not have to live in hidden shame where you know that something is wrong but nobody accepts it as real.

I think it depends on the individual. Sometimes talking about these things helps, sometimes it doesn't. It generally helps me.

I have some colleagues that talk about hardly much else, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s irritating and off-putting.

The military’s purpose in the US is far from meaningful unfortunately.

Go into the fighting forces and it’s endless war against fake enemies that does nothing to help the nation. Come home broken, with terrible support. If you’re badly broken enjoy winding up on the streets in your mid twenties with PTSD and no future.

Or for techies, maybe you’d go into the clandestine services and then find it’s massive overreach, spying on your own citizens, and building the tools to bring about dystopia.

It’s a pity because otherwise you’re right. And it should be as you say. It’s just that’s not what our military is sadly.

Trade depression and anxiety for ptsd, depression, and anxiety or a possible early death? Sounds like a terrible solution to me.

There is something to be said about left wing political beliefs being correlated with unhappiness. What causes what though is up for debate.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/10/23/republicans-still-...

Alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die can't have helped back in the day, either. He has been a techie his whole life, so he can't have missed USENET.

>> My life is, by every objective measurement, very very good.

> Clearly not if you're suffering.

C'mon, you know this statement was meant to illustrate the fact that even if everything in your life is going your way, it doesn't mean that you are immune from depression.

I can see where you are coming from on your other points, although I don't share all your sentiments myself. So ok, he probably shouldn't become a psychiatrist. And maybe the next talk he gives at a mental illness conference could benefit from some of this constructive criticism (I agree on that whole "I live life on the lowest difficulty setting" bit).

But overall, I see this article as a big plus in the fight against the stigma of mental illness, and the struggle for those afflicted to find help. Sure he's not an expert in the medical field, and his style of sharing his own story maybe isn't for everybody, but surely there is more value to him sharing than just that he is getting help for himself.

Devils advocate, personal experience, personal interpretation, and understanding of current literature:

1) Reflects current consensus in the field. Some may argue as 'coddling'(and consensus and approach may change) but is in general regarded as the safe empathetic thing to do, slightly analogous to epilepsy considerations.

'Posturing' could be considered an uncharitable assumption here... "What is the agenda behind any posturing?"

2.a) Presumably pointed out to show that it can indeed affect anyone. B) likely reflects a common thought cycle of his (guilt at feeling this way due to position etc.; this becomes part of the self hate cycle). C) to precisely acknowledge that this article doesn't intend to undermine other precarious or disadvantaged positions).

"> My life is, by every objective measurement, very very good. Clearly not if you're suffering."

This is precisely the point he was making, I believe(...?)

3) is important to those readers that still cannot bear to even imagine burdening their loved one with a similar admission. At least one of this article's readers wept imagining the value, freedom and weightlessness that may come from finally saying this, and by extension realising the inevitability of that statement vs a more unsatisfactory ending. (I.e it was valuable to one reader , at least).

4. Seems appropriate to ask for funding to reduce net negative emotion in the world.

I would assume that your downvotes are due to your answer showing appearing unnecessarily hostile and uncharitable to the article, which is probably being interpreted on face value and being written with good, empathetic intention (not a hidden agenda).

You've been downvoted because it sounds like you're rejecting Wil Wheaton's core point, which is to bring into the open a topic that is still pretty taboo in American society. He's doing this to raise awareness, and help other people who are suffering alone get help.

To address your points:

- This is planned and calculated only to the extent that it's a speech meant to get a point across. It is revealing personal vulnerability in order to help others who might be suffering from similar conditions, or those who have friends or family suffering from them, recognize the symptoms and take action.

1. The term "trigger warning" is sadly overloaded these days, but it is still useful for those suffering from the anxiety and depression he's talking about. Those are the people targeted by that paragraph, not you. Note that this speech was addressing NAMI, "National Association on Mental Illness", so it's likely some of those people were in the audience.

2. The word "objective" is the last sentence is key here. He is contrasting how other perceive the quality of his life vs how he's actually living it.

3. He's apologizing to his mother because she is likely going to hear or read this speech which reveals some pretty personal information, and she will likely blame herself. More generally, it's a message to people who have lost loved ones: don't blame yourselves.

4. Yes, he's trying to raise awareness and push for social change. Activism is part of doing that, and of course publishing this speech is as well.

maybe he genuinely believes that 1) and 2) are important. or maybe he doesn't want to get trashed in the comments, so he just throws the easy disclaimers out front. either is fine, imo.

3) and 4), maybe you have a point there...

1. For the audience this is not unusual, if not even expected.

2. If you're going to mention accomplishments, why _not_ mention things that may temper them?

3. I don't think the statement was necessarily incongruent with the rest of the talk, but your criticisms are fair.

4, and the rest. Given that this is specifically a talk to and in support of a specific organization, why _wouldn't_ he do this? If he doesn't believe in and support their views, why would he be talking for them? And if he does, why would he not say so while talking to them?

In response to your 4th point, these were prepared remarks for a NAMI conference in Ohio. He says as much at the very beginning of the article.

After wrestling with this linguistic problem for quite some time, the best term I’ve come up with this far is “mental injury”. I strongly prefer it to “illness” because illness connotes a disease of the flesh, and there is no proof that any of the things we typically call mental illness (with a few notable exceptions like alzheimer’s and possibly seizures) are actually based in the body.

In contrast, most of the common “mental illnesses” can be linked to specific forms of psychological trauma or injury. For example, depression and anxiety being caused by emotional abuse. Or PTSD resulting from a traumatic event.

The other term that comes to mind is “fracture” or “break”. Like, I fractured my femur when I was in college. I got surgery, the femur healed. My femur didn’t get an “illness” and I certainly don’t feel any stigma or shame around the experience, other than regretting skiing way too fast.

It would be cool to say the same about the depression I experienced.

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, I fractured my mind after a really bad relationship with an emotionally abusive ex. Yeah, my mind broke pretty good, but thankfully it was a pretty clean break, I got it set right and after a few years of psychoanalysis and some quality entheogens it’s as good as new.”

It’s time to ditch the illness/disease model for mental illness and use terms like injury/fracture/break that both accurately describe the situation and clearly indicate that the situation can be remedied. The idea of chronic and untreatable mental illness is a self fulfilling prophecy and does far more harm than good.

I see people already picking apart what you said, but I see where you're coming from. If course lung cancer is not fake cancer, because it's treated at the same places as other types of cancer. We have hospitals for physical illness though, and you usually see mental illness treated at a separate place. The mental health therapists in my town work out of unremarkable buildings behind some restaurants, while the major hospital has a block to itself with flashy signs identifying what it is. I think that is that leads me to see the "illness" in "mental illness" with a different connotation.

Kind of like how "heart disease" means, not actually a disease? Or "lung cancer" means, not really cancer?

> In most other contexts we encounter, stuffing an adjective in there means "NOT".

No, in most contexts in English, modifying a noun with an adjective doesn't invert the meaning of the noun.

A “respiratory infection” is a real infection.

A “premeditated homicide” is a real homicide.

Or, from your post:

A “big part” is a real part.

A “better word” is a real word.

The “scientific method” is a real method.

“Real study” is real study and “real treatment” is real treatment.

> Is there a better word for mental illness, which stands on its own?

Edited out offensive comment

> Manual labor is something literally anyone can do.

No, it's not; people can just as easily lack the physical capacity for manual labor as they can lack the intellectual capacity for knowledge work. There are plenty of people who can do knowledge work but would be unable to do manual work.

Personal attacks and name calling aren't opinions, and aren't allowed here. Please don't do this again, regardless of how you feel about someone or how badly they behaved.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html