Hacker News Reader

I'm confused, the post I was replying to discussed doctors who did not believe the child was being abused. Are you saying you are 100% certain the doctors KNEW you were being abused, and decided it wasn't important?

As for treating the symptoms and not the cause, how can doctors treat teh cause if they can't pin down what it is? Would you prefer they just refused to treat the symptoms before finding the cause? That's the only other option.

View on HN

Then you did not read the post you were replying to

I told our family doctor about what was going on. He prescribed pills.

Yes. He wasn't the only one I reached out to either, there was also a long stream of therapists after that. I begged my parents to get us into therapy. We did and the therapy focused on why is insomniac so mentally ill. Insomniac (me) wasn't ill at all though. That's the point. Sometimes depression is the result of unrealistic expectations. For these the solution is CBT. But in other cases depression and suicide are symptoms of things being seriously fucked up. They are not "Mental illnesses". There is no chemical imbalance. The myth of mental illness as an explanation for why abused people are unhappy has caused a lot of suffering. I am not saying that some people are not insane. I am saying that when 50% of the people are depressed in a psychotic, inconsistent, abusive, warmongering society where abuse and torture are virtues, it's not because of a brain imbalance. It wasn't until I was an adult that I saw what was going on. Now I see pretty clearly and am no longer depressed. But I am angry, and that anger is justified. This was long ago and all the people involved are now dead, of natural causes. Getting the news they had died was the only thing that ever brought me peace.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com