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Comment by unono | Hacker News Reader

Hackers can make huge money in psychology/psychiatry (both prescientific fields). Life logging and it's analysis - quantified self. Positive psychology would be the better angle to play it, unregulated, big money in the self-help culture. Mobile apps are the right medium for it. There was recent doc on it 'Monitor Me' by bbc horizon.

edit: to replyers, it didn't want to post links for everything, so

google 'monitor me bbc horizon youtube', 'quantified self', 'self help industry', 'positive psychology'

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I'm trying to understand what you're saying, but honestly I have no idea what you just said. Would you clarify your meaning?

edit to reply to your edit: no, you'll have to do much better than that if you want to actually communicate with people and not be ignored or dismissed as crazy. Would you please spend at least 10 minutes typing an explanation of (a) what are you talking about, and (b) why is it valuable?

Maybe I should point out that your edit seems to assume that most people understood part of your original comment. Actually, I think nobody understood any of it. So you'll have to rewrite what you originally said. (One strategy would be to make your comment longer and more thorough, and don't assume that anyone understands what you're saying unless you've explained it thoroughly, even if it seems obvious to you.)

OK. I try to see articles and find a positive spin where I can say "hackers could ...". To some people it would be obvious, but to young or non-tech people it might not be, so it could be helpful to them.

As other commenters have said, psychiatry/psychology is an ineffective field and also expensive.

The self-help industry is kind of related to psychology/psyciatry, is unregulated, and a $11 billion a year field.

I gave a mention of a documentary that came out recently about people building apps in this category of self help/health/life monitoring kind of stuff. Some terms to google to find out more are what I typed in the OC.

I would pay folding money for this software+usage data - and I am just an affected individual (bipolar for 20 years). I went through a phase of asking for survey information (after they had published their paper article etc.)- no one would give it up.

I can't speak for the author of the parent post, but my understanding from his comment is:

He's suggesting the development of software to help people track their mental health, in much the same way people currently track other aspects of their day to day life, such as with a fitbit or mapmyrun. If people could track their mood, medications their taking, when and how frequently they take them, etc, that information would be valuable at both an individual and aggregate level.

Could you elaborate a bit? You lost me after life logging.

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