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Comment by infogulch | Hacker News Reader

Dr K is great. His community uses the phrase "AoE healing", fun video game references like that are pretty common and seem to connect to the audience.

I'm not sure that the fear mongering over whether his interview streams are therapy or not is useful. I can see why licensed professionals might be wary of new techniques, but requiring that everyone get 1-1 therapy doesn't seem to be scalable enough to meet modern needs; and maybe an preview of what therapy can be like is enough to get some to go.

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He replied to that personally, let me try to repeat his argument (I cant find a link). He argued that giving advice to other people is completly accepted if the advice doesn't come from a mental health professional. (You'll find plenty youtube videos on how to "overcome procrastination") However having the better understanding of the mind that a professional has can't lead to worse advice, so he too should be accepted giving it. Whether there is an inherent danger of talking to an psychiatrist in this interview format for the interviewee I don't know, but given the amount of disclaimers he's putting out there it seems save to me.

There's nothing wrong with a professional giving advice. The danger is in a professional giving advice and not accepting the liability for malpractice harms that comes with their professional license.

> having the better understanding of the mind that a professional has can't lead to worse advice, so he too should be accepted giving it

That seems simplistic. If people know he's a Dr, and they do, they might treat the advice differently.

He mentions that early in his discussion with Sasha Grey at around 9:45. He also later talks about how therapy is different than what he does on Twitch anyway (at 13:00) https://youtube.com/watch?t=777&v=DMw8G3RPWrQ&feature=youtu....

According to the article, he told a guy his life was empty (in an attempt to help him, of course) and the guy later died by suicide. It could have been completely unrelated, but I don't think it's just fear mongering.

That said, I didn't like the article much, and only want to stand up for the other people who were quoted in the article.

I had never thought people might blame Dr. K for his death until I read the article. The man attempted suicide in the past before ever talking to Dr. K, his friends and family said he was constantly at risk of going through with it again despite going to multiple therapists, and after speaking with Dr. K he said the conversation was helpful to him. Blaming Dr. K for one conversation with him half a year before he was finally successful with the suicide feels to me like blaming a doctor for being unable to save someone with a chronic condition after seeing them once in the ER.

I'm not doing that. There are too many factors going into whether someone survives having severe mental health problems or not. But I am saying it's not fear mongering to take a look and see whether this is causing people not to get the help they need, by providing some lower hanging fruit that seems like it might be just as good. You might be doing some mongering of your own by suggesting that I'm blaming Dr. K.

Please don't attack other commenters or put words in their mouth. Parent didn't suggest you blame Dr K.

Sorry, when I wrote my comment I didn't realize you might think I was implying you feel that way. That wasn't my intention. I was trying to call out a perspective in the article that I hadn't considered before (but that I ultimately disagree with for the reasons I stated).

No problem. I borderline was, I guess. Sorry for suggesting you were mongering, I added "might" but it was still not very nice.

I thought some more and don't think Dr. K can be blamed at all because Byron felt he had already tried a lot of what conventional medicine provides, so he was very open to Dr. K making any attempt to help him. Maybe it did help him some. I worry that Dr. K might get in the way of someone seeking professional help but I don't think it happened here.

Just to add some context in this particular case, Byron had seen many different recommend and self sought doctors over his life. Dr. K. in both private paid sessions and the public interview styled on his Twitch channels. Unfortunately Byron was a very sick guy. Fortunately (?) with the majority being public over the years a lot of people had an insight to how mental issues can arise and hide which brought a lot more attention to it within the gaming community.

There has also been other streamers that have taken his public talks into a deeper private session or gone to see other doctors after realising that they have things to be talked about and resolved.

As an unexpert observer it made me uncomfortable when Dr. K suggested Byron's life purpose was to create Everland (an online computer game). It seemed risky to encourage a suicidal person to put all of their eggs into a basket that was likely to fail. Maybe it was the correct move though and seriously troubled people just need any light on the horizon.

That said I generally appreciate his content, even if it's a bit formulaic/Tony Robbins-esque (who I also like): 1. Casual smallchat with someone, expertly sniffing out any trauma they might have. 2. Expose the trauma, causing strong emotional reactions in the participants and the audience. 3. Offer general advice, some practical and some spiritual. Reject bullshit excuses from the participant. 4. Everyone feels positive from picturing a brighter future/getting something off their chest.

Is this a similar format to 1:1 therapy?

For whatever it’s worth, working on something (usually computer game development) is the only thing that has ever pulled me out of a depression. I think feeling like something is your purpose, vs. needing that thing to succeed publicly are different things.

You know, I understand some people disagree with the insinuation here, but down voting really shouldn't be used like this. There was nothing inflamatory, ill intended, or outright wrong with anything in the comment. Seeing downvotes for unpopular opinions gives me a bad reminder of how reddit's voting meta evolved.

Rather than going straight to meta by decrying downvoters, a better way to rescue unfairly (in your opinion) greyed out comments is: 1. upvote it yourself (which I'm sure you did) 2. reply to it engaging with its content. This could be simple agreement, or even better, acknowledgement of a good argument, good phrasing, or interesting/under-addressed perspective.

Sometimes, the model of your engagement can speak more to how you think others should act than stating your opinion explicitly. At least that's where you should start. There be dragons in meta, don't invoke the dragons if there's still another way.

A bit off-topic but I haven't always been super happy with NPR's reporting recently.

The most eyebrow-raising moment: there was one front-page article published around the time of the election with a headline including a quote like (iirc) "We're in a real civil war". A headline like that just seems designed to spark violence. (BTW, they did later change the title to something less inflammatory)

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