ThrowawayP

I think suggesting that the disadvantages of gender are in any way comparable to the considerably greater disadvantages of being mentally or physically disabled is in extremely bad taste.

I would not hesitate to change genders, not for an instant, if it would free me from my disabilities.

> So I imagine if you have a hidden disability, if you need accommodation, it's in your best interest for people to know that, so they can accommodate you.

In my experience, even if it is made known, people are less forgiving of non-visible disabilities and some that interact with the disabled individual less frequently may even forget that it exists. One may have to actively "display" their disability, even if they'd rather appear to be as normal as possible.

> Microsoft has a similar program

My, um, psychic powers for predicting the future tells me anybody with autism issues or even just introversion who goes there will be penalized heavily in the stack rankings (which they no longer formally do, but informally...) at performance review time for lack of "visiblity" year after year and eventually be washed out of MS as "good attrition".

> Why not?

HN is about as qualified to give good advice on health issues as it is to give good info on astrophysics. There are few licensed medical professionals here.

Bingo. While I don't blame the author for trying to cope with his situation, I will say that, as one who has a disability myself (only 10% of normal visual acuity), it is quite "undesirable" and damned well "burdensome".

I'll pit my anecdata against your anecdata: Magnesium supplementation didn't do anything for my insomnia. I used the magnesium glycinate formulation from reputable brands at appropriate dosages.

> Which raises the question: Is depression a symptom? The root "disease" being the inability to connect / feel connected to others?

Imagine that you're currently experiencing the worst headache you've ever had. Remember how focused you were on the pain and not much else? Now imagine that that headache is permanent and incurable. You might learn to regain some measure of normalcy but that internal pain is always there and demanding attention.

It seems reasonably likely that those unfortunate souls who suffer from chronic (physical) pain would also exhibit similar writing patterns for much the same reason.

> * I asked him, "If you're never allowed to use a text editor/IDE that highlights braces or the space between them ever again would you still prefer braces to indentation?"*

Being visually impaired and also having coded since before syntax-highlighting editors became standard, yes. A brace character is something that's easy to visually perceive; whitespace isn't.

If you were under medical treatment for your depression (hopefully you were), just say that you had a medical issue, the treatment helped you recover, and that you spent part of the time recovering studying independently. Be prepared to provide a note from your therapist/doctor that provides the dates you were under treatment to back up your words but note it does not have to describe the issue you were treated for or the treatment. If pressed about the specifics, know your rights (Google around for info on what employers are legally permitted to ask about medical conditions), remind them of those restrictions, and be prepared to write off that employer if they persist.

Resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have a long, difficult road ahead if you want a programming job. Being from a non-traditional background, you're going to really have to shine at the interpersonal and coding side of interviews to persuade a company to hire you. Use study guides for both aspects and try to attend local tech meetups where you might be able to persuade a working professional to give you interviewing tips.

Persistence almost always pays off. Good luck to you.

> The author of the linked article addresses that: "Contrary to ableist opinion, a utopia is not a world where disability is a problem that’s been solved; rather, it’s an inevitable expression of genetic variance, and disabled humans are not just welcomed but fully included."

How ridiculous. As someone with a disability and having spent much time around others with various physical disabilities, I would jolly well hope that the the problem's been solved in the SF future and we'd sure as hell be the first in line to get fixed if treatments were available.

Yes, most of us disabled are 100% "ableist" because having a disability is, unsurprisingly, rather difficult and unpleasant.

> They had interviews with people that survived it -- and they basically all said that as soon as they let go, they realized it was a mistake. That all of their problems were solvable, except for the one they just made.

That fails to explain those who attempt suicide more than once.

EDIT: I found an informal estimate from this article (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tre...) by psychiatrist Scott Alexander:

"It is somewhat harder to find good studies on what percent attempt suicide again. By eyeballing some other statistics and trying to fit them together, I believe it is greater than 25% but less than 50%. One textbook whose studies I have not been able to verify says that 30% of untreated and 15% of treated suicide attempters try again."

While I don't directly agree with jrs95, the fact is that the pills just plain don't work a lot of the time. Google the medical term "treatment-resistant depression". The very first link says "Despite advances in the understanding of the psychopharmacology and biomarkers of major depression and the introduction of several novel classes of antidepressants, only 60%–70% of patients with depression respond to antidepressant therapy." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3363299/) Presumably, the odds were worse before.

Consider, too, that that probably doesn't even include those that develop tolerance effects afterward; with that, the numbers likely climb much closer to 50%-50% or worse.

> ...antisocial behavior, which means staying indoors or generally away from other people.

That is not at all what "antisocial behavior" means. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour

> Yes, I always find it amazing how patients can have a sudden sensorineural hearing loss and wait days before presenting.

Having gone to the physician with complaints many times and be told to wait to see if the issue goes away (most of them didn't) or that there's nothing to be done about it, one is quickly trained not to bother going to a physician for anything short of a major injury.

(And this behavior is from a physician who is a Ph.D at a teaching hospital, no less.)

Sorry but no. Even as an introvert, I can still recognize the problems that being able to escape into a smartphone during school would have caused me later in life.

Bear in mind that what will occur is that armed police will be dispatched to take the unfortunate individual into custody and transport them to a hospital to be involuntarily locked up in the mental health ward for psychiatric evaluation and it can be some number of days before they get a judicial hearing to attempt to secure their own release. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_interna...) By all reports, it can be a highly traumatic and humiliating process.

All this, based on some algorithm of unknown quality flagging posts for evaluation and reporting by moderators with no psychiatric or other medical training. And somehow this is supposed to be a good thing?

> It takes a few years.

It's been a bit under three years already; no joy.

Your theory just plain doesn't hold water. Sure would be nice if it did, though.

> Changing your lifestyle to treat depression works.

I did (and am still doing) all of those lifestyle changes and it didn't help me in the slightest. So much for that theory.

Not that people shouldn't try lifestyle changes but they are not the magic cure-all you're selling them as.

> These machines look rather uncomfortable :/

They are. But when the alternative is surgery to enlarge your nasal passages (which, like any form of surgery, may or may not work), well, forcing oneself to get used to it is the lesser of two evils.

Re-read the last sentence of his post.

> I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits, everything...

I did all of those things too and it did nothing for either my insomnia or depression. There are a surprising number of us out there with, as you say, "actual medical issues".

> Many suggest hiding until you have an offer if you can, but I could see that backfiring quickly.

I've never had it backfire over the course of a 20 year career, though the accommodations I need are rather limited (sub-$5000 worth of additional equipment) and I've aimed to be hired at larger corporations that are big enough to afford such accommodations and have a policy for providing them. I simply mention when I receive the offer that I have a disability and its nature and offer them a chance to renegotiate or withdraw the offer if they have any concerns about it affecting my ability to do any aspect of the job. So far, I've never had anyone take me up on it.

Really, there's nothing wrong with not mentioning a disability during the interview process if you choose not to. Your disability has (or should have) no bearing on your ability to do the job.

> Any suggestions on how a small office (~15 people) can have a napping area without taking on any additional custodial work?.

An ordinary couch that's long enough for a person to lie down on will do. If it's vinyl / plastic covered, cleanup is a matter of wiping it down periodically. Add a couple of small cushions to act as pillows (periodically replaced for hygiene) and, voilà, you're done. If the soundproofing of the nap area is less than optimal, add an inexpensive white noise generator to help mask ambient noise.

Employees can supply their own blankets, etc. (I can't imagine that people would be particularly enthused about the idea of a shared blanket anyway.) I use a cotton hoodie in place of a blanket since the hood can be pulled down over the eyes to block out light.

Also, on behalf of myself and others, thank you for being a considerate employer and providing a nap area. I, myself, suffer from treatment resistant insomnia and I know many colleagues who have had less than a full night's sleep because of their newborns or children who would have desperately welcomed a place to nap.

> The pills were like a light switch that have simply turned off my mental illness with almost no side-effects.

That means that you're in the not particularly large fraction of people that the pills work well for. Good for you.

For the rest of us, well, the pills can be a hell of side-effects, tolerance, and rebound ... and that's if they have any primary positive effect at all.

> Many of the traits the article mistakenly attributes to introverts (don’t like seeing unknown phone numbers calling / uncomfortable in the company of new people / hate being in the center of attention / go through hell every time they have to ask unknown people something / are ready to die visiting a party) are not traits I recognise in myself or in other introverted friends – I’d argue that they are just examples of people being socially awkward, or shy, which is different.

Being introverted myself and having many of the difficulties listed above and having seen similar behavior from other introverted people I've met, I'd say that the article is correct and those are indeed traits of introversion.

> Would grateful to hear anyone's experience taking SSRI's (Zoloft, etc.)

The experience of others doesn't mean a darned thing. Each person's biochemistry is highly individual which is why the success rate of treating various mental disorders using medication is so low.

I, for example, get rapid tolerance to just about everything, so even the few SSRIs that worked didn't help for long.

> Just curious. How long has it been?

About four years now.

> Another mistake people make is thinking that burning out is like dying, and you can't recover.

Speak for yourself, buddy. I'm still trying to overcome medical issues from my last bout with burnout, including sleep disturbances and stress-related gastritis, and so far the medical profession hasn't had much luck in dealing with any of them.

Burnout and the stress that goes along with it can absolutely do lasting damage to your body.

It is technically for added sugars. However, this individual is consuming an unusually high amount of fruit, IMO, and sugar is sugar, no matter its source. One can't reasonably claim, for example, that drinking a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice isn't a source of sugar even if no additional sugar was explicitly mixed in.

As I said, the blood tests will show whether or not there's actually a problem with his/her sugar intake.

(I am not a physician and this is not medical advice.)

Recommended maximum intake of sugars per day: 37.5g (men) / 25g (women)

Avg. sugars per banana: 14g Avg. sugars per orange: 9g

4 x 9g + (1 or 2) x 14g = 50-64g actual sugar intake per day from the fruits listed.

That being said, each person's metabolism behaves differently so there's no specific action that you necessarily need to take. You may wish to ask your physician do the appropriate blood tests to check for pre-diabetes at every annual physical.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prediabetes/di...