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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

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

> 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