Helping mentally ill people in the Philippines (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Helping mentally ill people in the Philippines (2022)

zeit.de

76 pointsTomte82 comments

I know this sounds weird but my relationships have improved significantly since I started showing my emotions. Specially being able to cry in front of my wife really opened up the gates to the full spectrum of emotions in our relationship. Stigmatization of this subject really sucks…

I have experienced the opposite, where it has projected fragility and ruptured trust relationships with both men and women.

As someone who hasn’t had that experience, I’m having such a hard time wrapping my head around this and how that previous status quo was at all healthy.

So it was the illusion of strength and stability that propped up trust in the relationship? How does crying destroy trust? There had to be more to it than just that.

I meant, people who were trustworthy previously were no longer

> So it was the illusion of strength and stability that propped up trust in the relationship? How does crying destroy trust? There had to be more to it than just that.

If you were projecting social competence and emotional stability in the idiom of your culture and then you start acting like an upper middle class Californian your spouse may want to join you in that. Or they may view it as some combination of a huge red flag and an utter betrayal. Imagine if a (secular, orthodox or religious) Jewish Israeli told his wife he was a Muslim now. That’s what abandoning the cultural scripts a relationship was built on is like. If you’re not actually the person they thought they were in a relationship with they may be willing to try and make it work. Or not.

> Imagine if a (secular, orthodox or religious) Jewish Israeli told his wife he was a Muslim now.

Sounds like another relationship built on illusions.

You're not wrong. She thought he's a proper orthodox Jew, he probably wasn't for a long time if ever, that definitely qualifies as an illusion. If hypothetical she were to leave, perhaps his illusion might have been that she'd not leave, but accept his decision and find a way to make it work regardless. Is she leaving because he kept his doubts a secret? I'd get that, can't have a working relationship without honesty. But if not: It's not like that sort of thing working out is completely unheard of, and while the HN audience tends to be dismissive of anything that doesn't feel simplistically rational, love is a pretty powerful thing that has overcome worse obstacles time and again.

Sir this isn't reddit.

It’s not about religion. That’s just yet example they chose. My opinion on the matter is unchanged.

The fraction of women who, consciously or unconsciously, see emotional vulnerability in men as repulsive is larger than most people would admit. That doesn't mean it isn't worth looking for one who doesn't. It may limit your dating pool a bit but I promise at the end of the day it's one hundred percent worth the effort.

Correct. If one is so inclined, search on TikTok for videos about “the ick”. It’s about as shallow and depressing as you’re imagining.

Emotional vulnerability and honesty is a pretty frequent example, which is a shame.

If someone only trusts you because you act like an emotionless robot, they're not worth hanging out with. You want to hang out with people who accept your whole self, weaknesses and strengths included.

At some point in your life you might need support to go through dark and difficult times - you want people who are there for you throughout those periods.

I agree, but I think most people model others in their head quite crudely so whenever someone breaks outside of their box of expectations, that someone is no longer serving the same role in the relationship, and risks being shunned or replaced. Purely conjecture though.

On the flip side, now closer to an emotionless robot due to such experiences, I find people relying on me for my emotionless roboticism.

I showed vulnerability in a relationship and it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Not something I'll ever repeat.

I have the opposite experience. Parts of our relationship are better but she's not as romantically engaged in the relationship. Many women prefer an emotionally numb confident man to an emotionally available one.

Prefer is maybe the wrong word. Attracted to us more what I meant.

That's good it worked out for you. Many women tell their man it's OK to cry and be vulnerable, then are completely disgusted and sometimes leave them when it happens.

That's a good sign that they're not good relationship material - the earlier this happens, the sooner you can get out.

Either way, it works out.

That sounds like an ultimately useful filtering process.

Only for those who are still in the selection stage.

Time for another selection stage.

So not crying and staying with a person as psycho as that is healthier?

Depending on how good the sex is, yes.

Good riddens then? It's just a case of having a terrible person as a partner.

FYI, it is riddance.

In my opinion, you are interpreting it incorrectly.

Look from their perspective.

"My man is so smart, competent and emotionally stable. I can rely on him for anything!"

"Oh no he's crying, does this mean our family won't survive? What do I do?"

It's not anything more complicated than that. Women can probably chime in to tell me if I'm right or wrong, but this is a human perspective, because children will feel the same way if the father cries.

He didn’t even interpret the reason for it. Just that a woman may be disgusted.

You covered some reason for it on the woman’s part. While he (OP) seemed to only be talking about the man’s reason (motivation) to not act like that.

But it's unacceptable for a man to do/think the same.

We don't have to give birth. Being self reliant is thus our cross to bear.

This comment makes no sense.

Women have the sacred responsibly to bring children to life. The least men can do is be reliable and handle their emotions.

Oh no! he showed....gasps emotion! Surely you can't rely on someone who shows emotion? The stereotype of "the man cries = we're doomed" is perpetuated by people who think like you. It's not like men are designed to just not cry unless they're doomed.

Men are only allowed to cry after they have proven themselves. For the most part this takes years.

This comment is quite demeaning to women's intelligence. There is no reason for a woman to consider that emotional openness on the side of her husband is an indication that their family won't survive.

Crying is an expression of bottled up emotions, not an acceptance of defeat. Someone can cry and be invigorated to try harder to deal with their problems or they can cry but still be supportive to their spouse and provide emotional stability.

Womens' reactions are dependent upon their personality, their values, their view of the other person, the environment, their current emotional state, their biology and a lot of other factors at any given moment. This explains the fact that some people in this thread talk about how their crying led to more fulfilling relationships why others talk about break ups and loss of trust.

Even the point about children is completely arbitrary. Will children feel that their family won't survive due to their father crying about a lost relative? Doesn't it depend on their age? Furthermore, children need to see that their parents are humans and how to express their emotions. The alternative is that they find more indirect ways to do that like alcoholism, abuse, self-harm, extreme escapism and many other banes of today's society.

Archive with full text of article: https://archive.ph/no60y

Even in urban areas and cities, there is still a stigma attached with regard to mental illness. This is a topic that is somewhat taboo for the majority, many believe you can be cured with Christianity or any religion.

Correct URL: https://www.zeit.de/gesundheit/2022-10/mental-illness-povert...

Archive URL: https://archive.is/no60y

mental illness in developing world is a very sad subject. mostly people don't understand and don't have the capacity to deal with it, and there is almost no support.

Is it a “sad” subject? Or is it a cultural adaptation to scarcity and tough circumstances? Nobody cares about your emotional health in the Bangladeshi village my dad is from. Would the village function better if they sat around talking about their feelings like white people?

Psychosis, schizophrenia and suicidality are not about "sitting around talking about your feelings". What an insane take.

You need medication to meaningfully address those major conditions, which most people in the developing world don’t have. Even there it seems like the reaction of people in the Philippines (to ostracize people with those conditions to avoid them becoming a burden to thecommunity) is a rational adaptation to their circumstances.

Indeed mental illness is higher than basic needs on the Maslow pyramid but some people overlook that.

Obviously people would care if they didn’t have more important/pressing needs to care about.

An eye-opening piece on the inadequacy of psychiatric care in developing economies. Why "The Men Cry in the Dark" though? The article seems to be about both men and women and features a profile of a young woman with no discussion of male-specific issues.

It's referring to this:

> But the men stayed away. Verzosa and the team from the Health Ministry couldn’t figure out why. But when they changed the time of the meeting to 6 p.m., the men suddenly showed up as well.

> After all, it’s harder to see the tears in the gathering dusk. Men find it easier to cry when it’s dark.

It's always strange when someone immediately reaches for that kind of explanation instead of considering something much simpler: that it's easier to attend a 6pm meeting after work than tell your boss that you're taking a few hours off. But then again, it's Die Zeit, their audience has some expectations that need to be fulfilled.

Yeah. Like really, you can’t see eyes well up at dusk? Or hear sniffling?

In some (online) newspapers it's not uncommon for headlines to be just an interesting quote from the article and not the actual topic of the article. It's somewhat clickbaity and comes from the fact that the headlines are written by different people than the articles.

I was wondering the same thing. Unless, they mean "The Men" as in human species. It is a little misleading anyway.

They mean "male", because the German title is unambiguous ("Männer" vs. "Menschen").

Oh well, then I don't understand the title.

Man I'd rather cry about how hard it is to read from that website. That user experience is worth crying about.

Hard to scroll, jumps here and there, come on.

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