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Comment by andywood | Hacker News Reader

I am willing to 'out' myself as a human being who has struggled with serious mental illness my whole life, if there's a chance it could help this person. I have also had a long and prosperous career, including 5 years as a senior engineer and lead at Microsoft. These two things are very nearly orthogonal. I.e. my medical history has very little to do with my employment history.

But being compassionate does not require you to analyze this person's merits. The only thing to 'analyze' is that he begged you for help.

Also, please remember the hackers, family, and friends we have lost to suicide. People say "I wish we'd known. Maybe we could have helped." Well, you know; and there is a chance you could help.

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As a person who has struggled with the same, I disagree. Compassion and "help" from strangers would have helped me very little — might even have harmed me. The compassion of my family and friends, their encouragement, honesty, and support, helped me beyond measure. I don't think strangers on the internet can fill that rôle.

It's a very fine line that is impossible to define for anything other than a machine.

Help from anonymous strangers can save lives. The flip side is that the potential for harm is greater than the aid of a professional or friend.

It's so tightly coupled to the scenario (nature vs nurture) that efforts to argue are probably futile.

Every person's story is unique. Xah's is here:

http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html

There doesn't seem to have been a deep bench for his support team for a very long time, if ever.

When I went to school in Gainesville, there was a saying: No matter how weird you are, there are a bunch of people who are weirder. The internet is that at scale. Thirty years ago, Xah would probably not have known people who he could identify with or that anyone identifies with him. The internet gets some people out of their isolation. It lets them talk about things that they find interesting or that matter.

I don't talk programming languages with the locals. The appropriate topics are children, church, and Auburn football - which runs from National Signing Day in February to the BCS in January.

And some kind of help is the kind of help that helping's all about

And some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without

- Shel Silverstein

Just, please, be careful in categorically deciding which is which.

That's fine, but people need to eat. Plus, a lot of people simply don't have that support network. Gifts from strangers save lives every day.

He could do with some help in the near term, but in the long term he should be fine.

He needs to socialize more in an environment that will get him a job that allows him to pursue his passion and get out some more.

Perhaps some unobtrusive ads on his website geared to stuff which fits in with the leisure interests and hobbies of Lisp hackers and relate geeks should serve him well.

It will require a notice to Adblock & Noscript users that they should unblock ads and Javascript from his page as they are unobtrusive

If your leg has a medical problem, get well soon, do everything medically needed. If your brain has a medical problem, people will treat you very differently. Voices like yours will hopefully change that over time.

I don't see any evidence of him having a medical problem, but he surely deserves our compassion.

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