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Comment by ex_mozillian | Hacker News Reader

Fifth thing you should have known:

Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.

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We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they have an issue, understand that help is available, and being willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always been there.

I don't believe that to be true, mental health amongst teens has had a rapid decline in the past 10ish years, social media and always connected seems to be a major part of that.

exactly.. in the luddite era dyslexia wasn't recognized and people assumed you were dumb. Likewise in the 70s and 80s ADHD/Depression/Anxiety etc were thought to be harmless and associated with "laziness/bad parenting" etc.

Now, we are more intelligent and the average person knows better than to downplay mental health challenges.

The truth includes both the other comments to this reply: modern science has given us more insight into our long standing problems (and some solutions too), but also technology that can be detrimental to our mental health. Yes it's true that both a poison and its antidote can be drunk from a cup. But people might be aversive to the cup they drank the poison from, even if it now contains the antidote. And to think the cup is the only way to administer the antidote may exclude a lot of people who might other benefit from the service

"Rates of teenage depression began to rise around 2012, when adolescent use of social media became common"[1]

It's not clear to me that there's a mechanism to link this to the higher rate of diagnosis hypothesis. The authors instead link it to social media.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00296-x

I'm sympathetic to the idea that social media apps are designed to be malware for your brain, but it's a long long stretch from that to the argument that having a pocket computer is inherently bad.

I have a great solution for todo lists and it helps mental health a bit. Unfortunately I cannot make a startup out of it because it is this: use a pen and paper for your todo lists, and make plenty of them. I could create some weird elaborate todo system and sell that, but really I just do square boxes with writing next to each box and tick it off, so there you go!

There are two views on the point. One is that we should stick to traditional in-person therapy, use pen and paper, and be strict. The other is that we should help people wherever they are. If they use mobile devices, let's try to help them there.

Not 100% sure I agree…

https://www.ourherd.io/ has had really strong feedback that it has had a positive impact by actually being a social app tailored for mental health…

Connect with people where they're at. Don't ask them to go somewhere else. Maybe the best place for an alcohol intervention is... a bar ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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