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Comment by drdeadringer | Hacker News Reader

What if I told you that "toughen-the-fuck-up" does little to address positively actual depression and burn out?

I've watched a perfectly healthy young man of 15 get a diagnosis of depression from a doctor and was given a prescription of Prozac. We tore up the script and told him it was exam stress and he was fine. Still is 8 years later and kicking ass.

Life is tough and many people, possibly most, want to be told that it's not really tough, it's just that you're special which makes it harder for you and this pill and less work/hardship will solve your problem.

It's why the USA is filled with people addicted to and completely anesthetized by various prescription drugs.

Sure, real depression actually exists. But it's rare and I suspect the over-diagnosis we're seeing is more damaging by removing people from active and productive lives than lack of diagnosis.

When last did you hear a doctor tell someone to get regular sleep, eat well, get some exercise and face up the the challenges they're presented?

There is some truth in what you're saying but you're overly dismissive of the very real and not-actually-rare issues of depression, which have physical causes and treatments just like any other human ailment.

Telling someone who actually has depression--that is, a brain chemistry imbalance that causes negative feelings--to toughen up is about as helpful as telling someone with a broken leg to walk it off.

It is nothing like a broken leg. A broken leg has a clear understandable cause and a clear efficacious solution. Depression has neither.

If "toughen up" means eating well and exercising, it may very well be just as effective as SSRIs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2291072/

In my anecdotal experience the link between lack of exercise, poor diet, and depression is very strong. Hopefully there is more research into this area, but the main issue with it is that depression and SB is methodologically weak. What counts as "depressed" and "sedentary behavior" are extremely open-ended. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20174982

The thing is, "toughen up" is not taken to mean that, particularly by someone who is depressed. It's taken to mean "stop complaining, there's nothing wrong with you", which can be very damaging for someone in an already unstable mental state.

Wow, I hope your son(?) is able to break away from your frankly horrible advice and live a happy life. Antidepressants help people and literally save lives. Depressed people can be very effective at hiding it, and you might think he's "kicking ass" up to the point where he isn't in your life anymore.

"Just toughen up" is the unsympathetic, counterproductive and, frankly, dangerous advice of the last century. Take your own advice and stop complaining about humanity deciding it's good to care about each other and care about yourself. Or better yet, see a counselor or therapist about your stunted emotional growth.

This kind of attitude is exactly the reason I took so long to tell anyone when I started getting symptoms of depression. Whether or not it's true, there's a very thin line between complaining about over-diagnosis and encouraging a very damaging stigma against people with what is, at the end of the day, a mental illness they can't help.

Secondly, when I did finally get some help, the absolute first thing I was told was to try exactly those things -- improve my sleep, diet and exercise. Your problem is with the attempted treatment you've seen, not really the identification.

As a person who was both actually depressed and actually burnt out (separate occasions, yay). Toughening the fuck up was the only thing that actually helped.

As a fictional man with a steel jaw and a nose that was never broken in over 50 fights once said "It's not about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep going forward"

Yes, wear your opponents out, Thunderbolt.

It only takes getting up one more time than they knock you down.

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