Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos | Hacker News Reader

Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos

cbc.ca

18 pointskirubakaran36 comments

I have trouble believing that even a professional, experienced psychiatrist or therapist can diagnose being cured from clinical depression based on a handful of facebook photos. I also have trouble believing that the decision at the insurance company was made with any involvement whatsoever from professional psychiatrists, much less her therapist in particular.

Dropping coverage is potentially dangerous, if they're on medication. Altering (or stopping) anti-depressent dosages requires professional oversight. And if you're getting worker's comp, I certainly hope you're on medications.

The most interesting part: She also doesn’t understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts. Assuming this is not a case of user error, I too wonder about that.

The insurance issue is interesting too, but the 'depression = disability?' question is rather too broad for HN.

Because the default privacy setting for photo albums is "visible to everyone", and most people don't realize that it's independent from profile privacy. It's one of the many flaws of facebook's privacy (at least for an ordinary user who isn't web-savvy).

Also - even if she totally locked down her profile, the photos of her could have been uploaded by friends with more lenient privacy settings.

I think this is the tip of a large iceberg, and we may see more of the iceberg in upcoming years. A large number of web users have discarded traditional ideas of privacy to post information about themselves.

Suppose Facebook applies some Machine Learning algorithm and can predict roughly which users will incur insurance claims. Inputs could include user-generated text, size and shape of social graph, entities recognized in user-generated photos, etc. That data would be valuable to insurers.

It seems like many of these users are mentally in a living room with their friends, while actually uploading their private info to a corporation's servers.

While that may be the case, in this instance the insurance company is probably in the wrong. The Facebook photos along should not be enough for them to say that she's cured. Maybe enough for them to feel they need to spawn an investigation, but I somehow doubt that they consulted with her doctor or had a doctor of their own choosing interview her.

An insurance claims agent looking at Facebook photos is not enough to say, "Look! There's a smile on her face! She can't be depressed! It's impossible for a depressed person to smile!" This isn't exactly the same as seeing a photo of someone that claims to be paralyzed from the waist-down running in a marathon...

How the insurance company accessed the photos in this instance is irrelevant. I'm more concerned with how they used them once they had them. I'd be concerned with how they obtained them if there was a possibility of using 'dubious means' though.

I'll be totally honest–I'm having a really hard time generating a fair opinion on this matter.

I'm not going to pretend to know how depression works, how often it strikes patients, or how much it disables a person. If you truly can't work, I get it.

OTOH, if you can go on vacation, it would seem to me that you could perhaps work part-time, try to attend vocational rehab, or something.

I know it's not popular to side with big insurance companies, but I can't blame them for at least investigating claims like this.

My father is a V.A. Dentist. He routinely sees veterans who are collecting big benefit checks and receiving full medical (plus travel compensation) for PTSD. The the thing is, they never get "better". They live on the tax-payees dime perpetually. Most have never seen combat.

This is a lot like that.

> Most have never seen combat.

That's anecdotal at best.

There's no widely-accepted cure for PTSD yet. Sometimes people get better on their own, but we really don't know why.

Obviously none of us knows how the woman's therapist or other professional counseled her. But I can imagine a mental health professional telling someone "you should try to get out. Don't lock yourself at home. Go out with friends. Go to the beach. Just don't sit at home in the dark and stew."

So, you go out. You smile. You make progress. It's not "I'm cured," it's "this is one thing I'm doing to help myself."

For the insurance company to deny coverage based on that, is about the same as denying coverage for anti-depressants because you're taking anti-depressants.

Of course we can assume that they're just looking for a reason, any reason, to deny coverage. The worker who did this probably gets better performance reviews for more denials.

The closest to reasonable that this could have ever come, is for the insurance company to request consultation with her and her doctor. What actually happened is a non-qualified functionary made a potentially life-threatening decision. Probably just before lunch.

Having severe enough depression to get some sort of long-term disability from insurance isn't something that comes without a doctor's note. So a doctor diagnosed her with this severe depression, but the accountants and lawyers were the ones that diagnosed her as cured from it. Ignoring whether or not the depression was severe enough for her to be on disability, I would assume it's something for a doctor to decide... And I somehow doubt that they showed the Facebook photos to a doctor and the doctor said, "Yea she's cured!" without having a personal interview with her.

What people don't seem to understand about insurance is that they are entirely motivated by profit. They're not your mom and dad. They're not going to feel obligated just because you've been contributing to their plan for twenty years. If you have car accident, for example, they're ok with you being laid up for a few weeks but after a certain point you become a problem, a very serious problem and they'll do whatever it takes to get you back to work. Or off their books. Either way it doesn't matter. The longer you drain their funds, the more intensely they'll scrutinize your life, looking for some justification to ditch you. If you're on sick leave due to depression it's just dumb to post party pictures on the Internet.

This is private disability insurance in a province of Canada? How does that interact with Canada's system of medical insurance?

There are still private insurance companies that will cover things not normally covered by the provincial plans. Drugs would be another good example of something not universally covered (depending on drug). Drugs are, however, price controlled in many cases. My sister has asthma, and has to pay a lot for inhalers; thus, working somewhere with health coverage is still a big concern for her.

Quebec always tends to do things a little differently, but I'm surprised at this because in general they cover more things publicly, not less. I'm betting that the province would only cover "long term" disability.

You should really read up on how the various systems of government medical systems work. In the UK, the government owns the hospitals, so some things are free and somethings require payment (which you can get medical insurance for). In Germany, it's a government-owned insurance company and the hospitals are still privately or publicly owned. In Canada, the health system is not tied to the Federal government as much as each Provence has their own health plan/system. (i.e. Ontario has OHIP, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan). You can get insurance from your employer (or privately) that basically covers whatever the government plan doesn't (including some medications, etc that aren't normally covered).

This is what happens when we treat mental illness like physical illness.

Depression just ain't the same as a broken leg.

You can get paid sick leave for "depression" in Canada?

(You can't easily claim worker's comp for mental illness in the US without it being concomitant to a physical injury; I'm not making a statement about the seriousness of depression.)

"depression" is serious. I would down vote you if I could.

Drug addiction is serious. Can you get paid sick leave for drug addiction?

Possibly. I'll assume that you're really wondering this and not just being sarcastic. If you are being sarcastic, then why don't you look up whether or not drug addiction is a disability under a Canadian insurer instead of making a comment that doesn't add too much to the discussion?

The answer to that question in the US appears to be "no".

Canadian EI sickness benefits are paid, at least in some cases, to workers who are residents at inpatient clinics for addiction.

... but not, apparently, by Worker's Comp in Manitoba. Nor is mental illness in general, unless concomitant to a physical trauma.

If it is serious, why aren't those benefits available in US?

Prejudice.

It wasn't that long ago that people with mental problems were sequestered away in asylums where the conditions were often-times worse than the prison system. And many times the workers would abuse the patients (phsyically,sexually,etc) because there was little the patients could do (i.e. if she says that I raped her, I'll just say that she's delusional).

Is it any wonder, that other mental conditions aren't really taken seriously? For most people 'depression' is some nebulous condition that no one takes seriously until the depressed person has a failed attempt at suicide then everyone says that the "didn't see it coming."

Extreme difficulty of reliably diagnosing and assessing the impact of the illness on ability to work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

"Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky, posits that depression is the most damaging disease that you can experience. Right now it is the number four cause of disability in the US and it is becoming more common. Sapolsky states that depression is as real of a biological disease as is diabetes."

The most damaging disease you can experience? Sure, in a sense. I've never held down a job for more than six months because of it, and several times I've had to pick up the pieces of my broken life after a particularly bad episode. To be honest, though, I'd rather have this than, say, down's syndrome.

Just like migraines and the flu, depression is a technical medical term that has a more precise meaning than the general population uses.

Unlike the flu, depression can be faked.

People have faked being paralyzed too. I guess we should eliminate disability for paralysis then...

Do you think paralysis, the flu, and depression are equally easy to fake?

Depression is a devastating illness. It destroys people’s lives and kills them through suicide.

If you ask the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, it's psychology's eugenics campaign through the use of 'poisons' in the anti-depressant drugs that kills people with depression.

Wait, wha? Really? That bullshit?

I was just being sarcastic.

The web is full of all kinds of crazy, so you never really know. Hacker News less so, but still ... (I guess even 'A Modest Proposal' would be in dire need of emoticons if it were first posted on the web.)

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