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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

From reading the story, it sounds a lot like a mental health issue.

  - Started at UW at age 14 while competing. 
  - Had a programming job, quit to go back to cycling.  
  - She had a job, disappeared for 4 days, only to return, freak out and quit in fear of being fired. 
  - Had a support job, got fired, returned to Seattle and didn't even bother applying for another job.
  - Won't accept help from people who found out about her state.

“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,” Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

She needs some sort of counselling and help with life skills. Her line of thinking isn't even, "If I sort myself out, then maybe I can help some of the people I know".

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That last bit really got to me too. It seems like a lot of pride and guilt are mixed in with whatever else might be going on. Yes, 12,000 people there, half a million in the country, but someone is trying to help her. So if she would let them, they could then help someone else. And then maybe she could double the effort by helping out others herself.

That all seems so easy sitting here in my air conditioned office and not having experienced anything in her life. I'm sure it's far more complicated than that.

society medicalizing it via the lens of psychology is not always helpful. These people need help, but teaching them to be part of the system again (which they rejected or which rejected them) can give them even more the feeling of not being understood. Urban living presses us into a pattern not everyone is cut out for or will find worth living.

but what do I know. kids today are put on Ritalin like it was candy, and everyone has to march in lockstep. If you don't you're lazy, or a bum. To quote Pulp Fiction:

VINCENT: So if you’re quitting the life, what’ll you do?

JULES: That’s what I’ve been sitting here contemplating. First, I’m gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I’m gonna walk the earth.

VINCENT: What do you mean, walk the earth?

JULES: You know, like Caine in “KUNG FU.” Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.

VINCENT: How long do you intend to walk the earth?

JULES: Until God puts me where he want me to be.

VINCENT: What if he never does?

JULES: If it takes forever, I’ll wait forever.

VINCENT: So you decided to be a bum?

JULES: I’ll just be Jules, Vincent – no more, no less.

EDIT: ofc medicalizing the problem is what people do because that way they become the problem of a therapist, and we can sleep better because we know that a professional will look after them (it's easier to deal with them by just looking at their disease instead of the human behind the disease - "and anyway how could we possibly help somebody that far gone and who obviously doesn't even want to be helped").

For anyone who doesn't know this yet: German prisons (probably not just in Germany but other places in Europe) are full of homeless people that are there for not paying the tram/bus fare (often intentional in order to survive the colder months of the year).

Also for all the people who wonder how can anyone let themselves go so low and lie in the street with pants full of shit, it helps with not getting raped (it doesn't help though with avoiding being doused with lighter fluid and set on fire unfortunately).

I think it's more an existential crisis that can only be solved through some sort of combination of psychotherapy, drug therapy or self reflection.

Either way it needs to bring about a profound philosophical breakthrough that permanently changes your psychology.

I think a lot of problems we have in society are symptoms of psychological causes. Toffler's Future Shock posits that technology is accelerating this societal pathology. I also think that it's an incredibly difficult problem to overcome because there is no mass market or scalable cure... the antidote is a very personal journey of transformation.

The closest thing I've come across to a mass market cure is the profound experience playing Neir: Automata gives you if you manage to get far enough. Unfortunately, this is a philosophical masterpiece that is only going to be experienced by JRPG fans or truely open minded video game connoisseurs. In other words, it has a lot of preconditions. Still, Neir: Automata gives me hope that there could be a mass market solution to the existential malaise suffered in modern times.

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