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Comment by cloakandswagger | Hacker News Reader

If you ever feel angry, irritable, sad, apathetic, restless, tired or any way other than perfectly fine, positive and happy, then you're suffering from depression.

Go to your nearest psychiatrist to be assured that you're a victim, that your brain is broken and there's nothing that you can do, and that the only path to feeling "normal" is becoming dependent on a high-priced drug cocktail that will alter your brain chemistry.

This message was most certainly not brought to you by the pharmaceutical industry.

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Depression isn't "feeling any way other than perfectly fine", it's feeling so continuously for an extended period of time such that your mental state begins to prevent you from living a normal life.

Depression is a real issue for some people, and by trivializing it and blaming big pharma all you're doing is reinforcing the stigma around mental illness which makes it harder for people who really need it to seek help.

17% of the US population self-reported taking some form of psychiatric drug [1].

We're way past the point of truly disturbed people not seeking help due to the stigma of mental illness. Instead, it's cheerfully celebrated and encouraged in a way that I imagine will only stop once 100% of the country is zombified by mind-altering drugs.

The pendulum needs to swing back towards self-help and the idea that some discomfort is a part of normal life.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1-in-6-americans-...

Seeking help may end up including drugs as part of treatment, it may not. Pushing the narrative that depression isn't real and that depressed people should just get over it is ignorant and actively harms folks who do need help by reinforcing the stigma surrounding mental illness.

There's still a massive stigma against people with mental illness today. By no means are we "way past the point of truly disturbed people not seeking help due to the stigma of mental illness."

Kind of amazing how the modern world survived and even managed to send men to the moon without 17% of the population taking addictive brain melting pharmies that literally nobody understands. What boggles my mind is nobody reflects on this and thinks popping pills is some kind of normal thing.

But hey, having such thoughts is probably a sign of depression.

"There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." World Controller Mustapha Mond

Systemic use is not a counterargument when there may be a systemic problem. Half of humanity uses corrective eyewear (closer to 90% above the age of 70), everyone should be vaccinated, and a huge chunk of the population needs iron supplements. The brain is composed of dozens of modules that are each as complex as entire other organ systems in your body. The probability of something not going wrong in that mess is vanishingly small, same as you'd expect in any other codebase with such a horrifying level of complexity and tech debt. To be completely honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the true positive rate for psychiatric medication, the rate at which a real neurochemical issue could be root-caused and addressed for real human benefit satisfying the most idealistic and loftily philosophical of human values, is substantially higher than 17%.

Because in your world the only way to help people with depression are anti-depressants? Unlike the real world where people have various options (e.g. psychotherapy)?

Pretty sure the grandparent post was satirical. Hence the "this post NOT brought to you by the pharmaceutical industry".

In my world people aren't encouraged to start any sort of professional treatment as a first course of action, as it totally externalizes one's locus of control and robs them of the ability to help themselves through learned skills of introspection and metacognition.

Naturally it is when you are angry for no reason and it goes for months :)

For the downvoters, I'm fairly certain this was an attempt at sarcasm.

The sarcasm wasn't helpful and wasn't in good taste. In addition to what my sibling commenters have said, going to a doctor because you suspect you might be depressed or have any other concerns about your mental health doesn't automatically lead to being told you need to go on medication. Personally, I've known a few people who didn't talk to their doctors about their depression for a long time precisely because they didn't want to go on medication (or because they couldn't for family/cultural reasons). Because of that, they missed out on things like talk therapy which probably could have helped them.

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