Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Rather than trying to focus on not doing the thing you want to do in a sea of few options, one needs to develop new patterns.

Go travel, visit some friends overnight, go camping, anything to get out of the house and create new (or at least different) experiences and a bunch of simple-but-different problems you need to solve. When you're done and get back home, you can reintegrate to the Internet, catch up, and hopefully not feel too guilty about it. Spend your willpower making sure you get back out there, rather than trying to police your default behavior.

If that's not possible to due a lack of money, friends, physical ability, etc, then I'd say you are dealing with serious depression and professional help is not unwarranted.

View on HN

I would add that clubs, gyms, and meetups are a good, often free or very cheap option as well. Running, biking, skateboarding, climbing, calisthenics/acrobatics, board games, maker groups, art, music… all have very low cost of entry and likely have communities in any town or city.

I feel compelled to also add that while it seems well-meant, I think the tone of your last paragraph is a bit unproductive. A lot (most? all?) of us, at some point, fall out of the habit of exercising our senses of curiosity and wonder and trying new things. This can be caused by many combinations of family, economic, and social conditions, or for some, because of chemistry (ie “serious depression”). Therapy is indeed a good way to develop the skills to work against this and identify whether it’s actually a chemical problem in need of a chemical solution. But it doesn’t help to go straight to calling this “serious depression” needing “professional help.” Literally all of us can benefit from therapy, and making it out to be a big deal and putting labels on people makes many less likely to pursue it.

I was trying to head off a response of why the advice to get out and do something out of one's groove is impossible. Myself, I would include "family, economic, and social conditions" within the general category of "depression", rather than reserving that label for "purely chemical" problems.

Internal and external factors tend to pile up and reinforce one another, and if someone is at a point where those external factors are contributing to not being able to try changing patterns of behavior, that would be seem to be indicative of a problem that should be acknowledged.

It feels like I'm coming from a place that is the dual of your comment - even though everyone could theoretically benefit from therapy, people are not going to seek it out and add even more complexity to their lives unless they feel they need to - especially with the care-denying medical bureaucracy that permeates the US and apparently Canada. Acknowledging a problem is a first step to addressing it with an appropriate tool rather than normalization and coping band aids.

Valid points, but you’d do well not to refer to that state as “depression.” Depression is a particular pathology and most people are going to interpret it in regards to the medical/chemical circumstance rather than what you’re describing.

Siloing the concepts seems like a bad idea. Let's say someone has bad life circumstances, bad reinforcing patterns of behavior, plus a chemical imbalance in their brain. If they seek medical help for "depression", should treatment focus on the chemical imbalance? It could be that chemical imbalance is entirely due to their life circumstances, and addressing those would be much more appropriate than medicating them.

Treatment should focus on both. That doesn’t mean that bad life circumstances are depression though; rather they can be a factor contributing to depression.

If you went to a doctor for type 2 diabetes, they would tell you to eat healthier and exercise as well as to take medications when needed. Your eating and activity habits are not themselves diabetes, even though they contribute directly to your diabetes. Another person could act exactly the same but not trigger diabetes because of lower genetic predisposition. And another person could have a healthier lifestyle than you and have diabetes despite that (e.g. Type 1). Lifestyle is a contributor while diabetes is the pathology.

Life circumstances can be a contributor, but depression is a pathology. An effective healthcare team will treat both.

The medical community doesn't own the entire term. An individual should be able to say "I think I'm depressed" when reflecting on their own mental state, without that implying a narrow medical condition. Or worse, some paternalistic doctor attacking them for self-diagnosing.

You can say whatever you want to say if you feel it expresses your point. I’m simply trying to illustrate how many people would misconstrue your meaning if you refer to “depression” that way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com