Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tailspin2019 | Hacker News Reader

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I've had chronic depression my whole adult life, sometimes extremely crippling, and I do understand your view point to a degree, but at the same time I didn't really come away from this article feeling "invalidated" in any way.

The author's description of her symptoms match pretty strongly to my experience of depression (I would say they match my experience when I'm at my "neutral baseline" - definitely not in my worse moments). From what she's describing it doesn't sound like chronic depression but more circumstantial. But it's definitely depression. She doesn't need to have a badge of "I've had this for 20 years" to have a perfectly valid, and tough experience of depression.

She clearly went into it with already established patterns like exercise and a high degree of self awareness, which has served her well during this period and allowed her to move forwards through it. Some of the ideas she talked about were extremely interesting to me too. I've been trying different things for decades and yet there were still a couple of new ideas here that I haven't considered before.

For people experiencing depression over a longer timeframe, the experience may be different. But neither experience is invalid, nor invalidates the other.

Hope you continue to push through your bipolar! I've been told my depression is "mildly bipolar" whatever that means, but I definitely don't experience the extreme swings on a regular basis that are typically described in relation to bipolar.

Problem is the author, as most people that say they are depressed self-diagnose. And gives advice. How would people react if author self-diagnosed cancer and gave advice on how to cure it? Depression is disabling illness, why such lightly take?

Well for one, because if you ask 5 psychiatrists you'll get mixed diagnoses. You act as if the diagnosis for depression is some black or white thing. We know for a fact that it isn't by the way that it is diagnosed.

Parkinson is also not a black and white thing. I have bodily tremors due to my depression, can I self diagnose parkinsons and start giving advice? Would you approve?

Sure, why not? You have tremors so maybe you have some tips and tricks to help other people.

Getting a diagnosis from a psychiatrist that tells you that you have depression doesn't make your advice any more or less qualified.

When I was in my teens I answered like 5 questions on a piece of paper (on a scale of 1-10 type questions) and was instantly prescribed anti-depressants. That's the state of our medical system right now.

> When I was in my teens I answered like 5 questions on a piece of paper (on a scale of 1-10 type questions) and was instantly prescribed anti-depressants. That's the state of our medical system right now.

Amusingly(?) this was pretty much my diagnostic experience too.

I don’t think anyone would argue your experience was ideal, though context matters. That being said, it’s anecdata- the clinical definition of the various forms of depression are fairly well defined and a qualified mental health professional should be able to diagnose with general accuracy.

Put another way - it’s like diagnosing cancer. Sometimes it’s so obvious that any doctor can see it. Sometimes it might be benign or malignant, and it might be hard to tell.

Regardless, I would be pretty skeptical of someone who said, “hey I have cancer and here’s how I fixed it” who was never diagnosed in the first place.

In this case it’s entirely possible the author had adjustment disorder/situational depression, which for many/most people will clear itself up, and it helps if you exercise, sleep well, eat well, etc. That’s a very different thing than persistent clinical depression, and telling someone that all they have to do is work out and eat well and get outside is almost cruel.

> and telling someone that all they have to do is work out and eat well and get outside is almost cruel.

Except the author doesn't do this. They describe a system in which they track and observe what doesn't and what does work for them. Only someone that's living with a victim mentality would suggest that this is an attack on their own situation.

I'm tired of the suffering-olympics that people put on. "This person isn't as depressed as me. I've got a medical professional to confirm this, therefore what you've shared is unhelpful to anybody"

Surely you realize how ridiculous this position is?

Let me frame it another way - if someone said, "Hey, I have ALS, and here's what I did to fix it" - would we be having the same conversation? Or, "Hey, I have pancreatic cancer, and instead of medicine, I'm going with a fruits and coffee enema approach"

We would be talking about how irresponsible it is - which in fact, we did on this very site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14564547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080176

To be clear - I am not a victim, I have never suffered from clinical depression. I don't care about the victim olympics. But there's a whole host of conditions where we immediately disregard people who say they fixed it themselves, or tried to fix it themselves. But take something like depression and we are saying that "hey this worked for someone else so we should consider it, and criticizing it is a victim mentality"

Totally right.

The thing is, this is just a person writing about their experience. Using a common “label” of depression that we all largely understand.

I struggle to see this as a negative. I’ve been officially diagnosed, maybe she hasn’t. Who cares? Her experience is still valid, the techniques and ideas are useful and frankly more people should be encouraged to write about their personal experiences like this without being admonished for it. I see no malice or ill intent in this article. Or even trivialisation, given the brief eluding towards suicidal thoughts.

Even medical professionals can’t agree on the exact definition of depression. And if you read the DSM you’ll see that many of the diagnostic criteria are at odds with current scientific knowledge and understanding (the official diagnostic criteria understandably lags quite a bit).

It’s not a perfect science. But we seem to just be debating whether this person has the right to call their condition “depression” or not. I’m gonna call it and say that she does.

I think the main issue with the article is it has big wow-thanks-im-cured energy. Just do some of that low-activation exercise and cook for yourself, and whammo cheat code!

It comes across as patronizing for those who know what things can or should give a mood boost, but lack the activation energy, or don't get much benefit from the outcome.

> It comes across as patronizing

I think the thing I'm stuck on is how someone talking solely about their own personal lived experience during a low point in their life can possibly be patronising?

Is this not an interpretation that we as readers can choose or not choose? As opposed to something the author is doing to us?

If she was saying "depressed people should just do X, what's all the fuss about. Losers." then maybe I would feel patronised. But she's not doing that.

It's obviously a sensitive topic because a lot of people seem to share your view.

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