3 ms·

This seems like really bad advice on several fronts. For one, sleep deprivation has severe negative side-effects and is implicated in long term decline of overa

This seems like really bad advice on several fronts. For one, sleep deprivation has severe negative side-effects and is implicated in long term decline of overall health. For another, this is a big risk for people with bipolar, many of whom are unaware of that fact and may think they only have depression. Aggressive sleep deprivation can trigger a psychotic break in people who are susceptible, which is a shockingly high percentage of the population, especially along with other factors like stress and certain kinds of (very common) drug use. That's something you generally want to avoid at all costs.

freeflight 9y ago
> For another, this is a big risk for people with bipolar, many of whom are unaware of that fact and may think they only have depression. Imho this is the biggest issue with this whole complex of psychology. I've struggled with mental issues for pretty much my whole life, in my teens, it was considered "clinical depression", a couple of years later it was supposedly something along the lines of ADHS or maybe I'm somewhere on the spectrum, another couple of years later it's either borderline or bipolar, depending what doctor you ask. It's just a frustrating situation to be in because it feels like the diagnoses wholly depend on what doctor you ask, what mood they are in, how well you vibe with them on a personal level, or what literature they've read recently. In the end, it all feels like "professionals" who are mostly just wild-guessing around and on the basis of said wild-guess start suggesting some pretty drastic medication. At this point, I've pretty much given up on getting a "solid diagnosis", it all just feels way too arbitrary which is not at all helpful to my self-perception and my trust in medical institutions.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Yep. When you start digging into mental health you realize that we're at a very primitive level of understanding of it, in almost every aspect. For one there's this sort of broken model of untainted perfect neurotypicality that is the gold standard and any deviation from that is a disease or a disorder. For another there's a very poor understanding of what different classes of symptoms actually represent in underlying physiology and how they are related. Many times things are described as being "comorbid" when in reality they are just different expressions of the same underlying biology or psychology. Also there's a huge role that culture, education, and so forth play into these things. In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive therapy).
  - freeflight 9y ago
    > In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive therapy). Yup, that's exactly what I've been doing for years now. I've read through quite a bit of stuff ranging from Freud, Jung, B.F. Skinner to Edward de Bono and countless others in addition to lots of Wikipedia surfing and study reading. A rather common theme among a lot of them: Many of them went into studying psychology as an attempt to diagnose their own issues and often it feels more like reading philosophy rather than actual medical science. I wonder if we will ever be able to articulate something like a "Grand Unified Theory of the mind"? Considering how much of this is subjective to the individual and atop of that the individual's brain physiology, it seems like an impossible task. But then I see stuff like talks by Joscha Bach on C3 [0] [1] [2] and it's quite inspirational as it gives me hope that creating strong AI might actually help us understand what's going on under our own hoods a little bit better. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s

freeflight 9y ago

> For another, this is a big risk for people with bipolar, many of whom are unaware of that fact and may think they only have depression. Imho this is the biggest issue with this whole complex of psychology. I've struggled with mental issues for pretty much my whole life, in my teens, it was considered "clinical depression", a couple of years later it was supposedly something along the lines of ADHS or maybe I'm somewhere on the spectrum, another couple of years later it's either borderline or bipolar, depending what doctor you ask. It's just a frustrating situation to be in because it feels like the diagnoses wholly depend on what doctor you ask, what mood they are in, how well you vibe with them on a personal level, or what literature they've read recently. In the end, it all feels like "professionals" who are mostly just wild-guessing around and on the basis of said wild-guess start suggesting some pretty drastic medication. At this point, I've pretty much given up on getting a "solid diagnosis", it all just feels way too arbitrary which is not at all helpful to my self-perception and my trust in medical institutions.

InclinedPlane 9y ago
Yep. When you start digging into mental health you realize that we're at a very primitive level of understanding of it, in almost every aspect. For one there's this sort of broken model of untainted perfect neurotypicality that is the gold standard and any deviation from that is a disease or a disorder. For another there's a very poor understanding of what different classes of symptoms actually represent in underlying physiology and how they are related. Many times things are described as being "comorbid" when in reality they are just different expressions of the same underlying biology or psychology. Also there's a huge role that culture, education, and so forth play into these things. In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive therapy).
- freeflight 9y ago
  > In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive therapy). Yup, that's exactly what I've been doing for years now. I've read through quite a bit of stuff ranging from Freud, Jung, B.F. Skinner to Edward de Bono and countless others in addition to lots of Wikipedia surfing and study reading. A rather common theme among a lot of them: Many of them went into studying psychology as an attempt to diagnose their own issues and often it feels more like reading philosophy rather than actual medical science. I wonder if we will ever be able to articulate something like a "Grand Unified Theory of the mind"? Considering how much of this is subjective to the individual and atop of that the individual's brain physiology, it seems like an impossible task. But then I see stuff like talks by Joscha Bach on C3 [0] [1] [2] and it's quite inspirational as it gives me hope that creating strong AI might actually help us understand what's going on under our own hoods a little bit better. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s