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I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it, they'd be

• whatshisface 6y ago
  The issue is that understanding the news and understanding the real world can be very, very different things. An endless stream of anecdotes about rare crimes and individual misbehavior will upset anyone, but it can't help anybody understand the real world.
  • baddox 6y ago
    Also, it doesn’t sound healthy to me to read news with the attitude that a lot of the bad stuff that happens is because you just didn’t research enough and vote hard enough. The point of democracy shouldn’t be to blame the people for bad government policies and actions. It should be the government that is accountable.
    • evan_ 6y ago
      many people are explicitly and intentionally voting for the bad policies and actions though, can I blame them for that?
      • ctdonath 6y ago
        No. They think they're voting for the good policies and actions. We can legitimately disagree over the good/bad of policies and actions. Is instituting/increasing minimum wage: providing a livable income for those at the bottom? or denying jobs to those at the bottom (being unable to produce >= $MINWAGE)? Good/bad of the topic seems obvious, yet differing views are widely held.
        • notriddle 6y ago
          You're talking about subtle economic issues, when the original point was about people dismissing the pandemic as a hoax. One can be understood through the lense of conflict and mistake theory. The other requires a conspiracy.
          • whatshisface 6y ago
            I think that's a bad example, has anyone gotten elected over the corona hoax thing? Besides, "I would rather accept the risk of virus X than the inconvenience of wearing a mask," is a perfectly legitimate position for many viruses, and deciding which ones it applies to is the exact same kind of utility balance and value debate as any other policy choice.
        • evan_ 6y ago
          We all agree that it would be wrong to poison the reservoir. We all agree it’s wrong to pool our money to hire someone to poison the reservoir. If I vote for the mayoral candidate who promises to poison the reservoir, why should that suddenly be a completely morality-free decision on my part? Just because a lot of people made the same decision I did?
          • bickeringyokel 6y ago
            For the people that voted for the mayor it would be "morality free", because they presumably believe it's the right thing to do for some reason
        • lotsofpulp 6y ago
          I have spoken to people who have admitted their racist ideologies and motivations for voting. And I’ve interacted with people who knowingly vote for their own economic interests at the expense of society’s interests because they fundamentally believe they should take whatever they can get. The latter example especially takes place in local elections regarding things like zoning and local ordinances and work contracts.
• currymj 6y ago
  I would be willing to bet that refusing to wear a mask is strongly correlated with spending a lot of time reading about news and politics online.
  • nextlevelwizard 6y ago
    Wearing a mask in completely about politics in the USA. Most if not all social media posts about people wearing masks have people wearing completely useless fashion items on their faces. I'm sure it is mostly because they don't know better and partly to virtue signal. In any case there hasn't been any studies related to efficacy of wearing a mask in public to reduce the risk of infection, so not wearing a mask is not as crazy as some people make it out to be. This all said if I would use public transport I would be wearing a mask (just not a cloth mask or a surgical mask) or if I visited other places which were packed with people, but best solution is to just not go to places which have a lot of people in them.
• abellerose 6y ago
  As a trans woman, I wish more people thought like you do. I see so many trans men or women that don't pass (as their gender identity) because parents or healthcare doctors kept them from transitioning; before puberty disfigured their body and prevented any chance of them passing as their gender identity. The foregoing situation happened more in the past. Especially depending on where they lived and how the healthcare laws allow doctors to deny patients treatment because of religious reasons. I think nowadays that's going away with self consent treatment. Anyway my point is these people are suicidal because they don't pass with constant social reminders everyday while trying to function through normal everyday tasks that require interacting with strangers. They likely will never pass to strangers and unless they get the finances to attempt aesthetic surgeries. Well in the meantime people just tell them "do therapy" and while most have already tried but that's just not changing whats required for reality to be better. Nevertheless they're continuously told "just keep trying" and oh try another therapist that works for you! Makes me think that the mental healthcare is mostly for public image. Since sure some people benefit but for the ones that don't nothing improves and the professionals are fine with that reality.
  • sverona 6y ago
    Therapy can help some trans folks, but what they really need is a community that supports them regardless of how well they pass. Trans passing messageboards are absolutely brutal. Brutal honesty is necessary for some, for whom passing is a matter of physical safety. But for a lot more, it can amount to self-harming. Any deviation from sometimes pseudoscientific models of "man" and "woman" is seen as a tell, an imperfection. This is made worse by the fact that gender-affirming surgery is utterly unaffordable for most people, let alone most people struggling with dysphoria and depression. In addition, passing politics by nature excludes many nonbinary people, for whom it is by definition impossible to pass. Not long after I came out I kept trying to find references for how to be myself. It shouldn't be that way. Where might we be if trans bodies were seen as natural variation instead of deviance?
    • abellerose 6y ago
      > Therapy can help some trans folks, but what they really need is a community that supports them regardless of how well they pass. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that part. Therapy can help people starting out with blockers. Basically, young trans people that will pass but going through the social process is still difficult. Therapy isn't a universal solution and there is no proof that it works for everyone. The older population of trans people won't find therapy helpful depending on the following factors of did they get on on blockers at all, was HRT & good genetics in early 20s an option, and is it possible for them to pay for surgeries needing to eventually pass. Finding the "perfect community" for trans people is a flattering way of expressing segregation. They should be able to feel safe anywhere is what the solution should be. Otherwise they won't ever feel normal and possibly be assaulted or killed in society. I'm unsure why nonbinary people are relevant in a discussion about trans people and since they don't have a concept of passing to other people as a certain sex. Sure, they prefer to be nonbinary in regard to how they look or be received. Trans bodies aren't natural. Every trans person will express how they wish they could have started before puberty in an ideal life. The perfect life would have been just born cis as the sex they identify as or not have gender dysphoria. It's better to be honest than to hugbox someone into a dangerous situation. I've seen some trans people just want assistance in dying because passing is everything for quality of life to not be poor for them. I think they should be able to get it but only if passing is not going to be an option with HRT and surgeries are not going to fix anything. I remember reading a trans person has received assistance in dying somewhere in Europe for Gender Dysphoria. It's sad but that's how it is for some people in life.
• rayiner 6y ago
  Half the people doomscrolling are sitting up worried about a different set of things. The point of the article is that it’s not healthy for anyone. You’re not going to cut off resurgent Marxism by refreshing Newsmax in a loop in a loop. You’re also overlooking a very important fact of life. Overlooking other people’s suffering is an inherent human defense mechanism, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. You invoke it every time you spend a few grand on a vacation—an amount of money that could save a human life from malaria or feed a child in Bangladesh for a decade.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    I will say, it must be nice to spend so much time worrying about problems that don't exist instead of all the ones that actually do. Seems like it'd be a real comfort.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • rayiner 6y ago
      If you had told me 25 years ago that in my home country (Bangladesh) people were going to be demanding removal of a statue of lady justice from in front of the Supreme Court, and that the court would oblige, and that veiling women would go from being nearly non-existent to commonplace, and that secular journalists would be getting murdered, I wouldn’t have believed you. But Islamists got control of education, and all of those things happened. So imagine my alarm to read that 20% of social science professors self-identify as Marxist. A third of college students embrace communism. In 2017, the nation’s premier newspaper ran a sympathetic retrospective on a century of communism. Thousands of school districts are integrating material into their curriculum that claims slavery was capitalist. A bunch of people on a website associated with a startup incubator are going to read the preceding sentence and go “yeah, that makes sense.” So it feels like gaslighting for you to say it’s a “problem that doesn’t exist.” Maybe I’m being paranoid, but in my experience civilization is fragile. Better safe than sorry. But obviously, ranting about it on HN won’t fix the problem.
• coldtea 6y ago
  >Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it, they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. The actual actionable news is like 1/1000th of the news if not less...
• dutch3000 6y ago
  reality is what a person experiences, not what they read in the news. the nano second, global reach of news has led to a warped reality that is heavily tilted towards doom. something bad that happened half way across the planet is instantly served up on a global scale. the scope of the news is no longer human scale, thus our inability to ever find balance in our perception of reality. put more influence in the immediate reality you personally experience and the balance will return. i haven’t looked at the news in two months and now get my news by asking friends and family whats going on. if something interests me, i will actively seek out more info on the subject/event. good luck.
• coffeefirst 6y ago
  True, but in moderation. Looking at a homepage twice a day or reading a newsletter and responding accordingly is a very different habit than scrolling an infinite, constantly updated feed.
• cameldrv 6y ago
  If you were paying close attention to the news in Feb-April, you were being told not to wear a mask.
  • kergonath 6y ago
    The media have been particularly bad at explaining that our best knowledge changes with time, as we figure out any test things, and governments even more so. Our understanding of the way the virus is transmitted changed quite a lot in 6 months. At some point we thought it was mostly spread by direct contact; then by droplets; now we believe it is airborne, to a certain extent. Governments also had the incentive to limit use of PPE to critical workers because of the short supply. It was also obvious that several governments were clueless. So yes, you were told not to wear a mask, whilst at the same time you were provided with facts that contradicted it. This was obvious if you were following the news, particularly the evolution of the then-epidemic in China, Taiwan and South Korea. Well, for that you need to follow real news, not Fox, the Mail, or disinformation campaigns spread by social media. You also need a grip on how science works, because journalists won’t explain, and often don’t seem to understand.
  • creato 6y ago
    Even if it were as simple as you make it sound, which I disagree with: so what? Our understanding of the world improves over time.
    • cameldrv 6y ago
      Not really. Almost all of the research that supports masking was done years ago. I spent March getting shouted down in various places because I read that research and concluded that people should be wearing masks. It took a machine learning researcher of all people to bring people around to what was obvious to anyone who spent a few hours reading scientific research. The average reporter for a newspaper simply doesn't have the time to actually understand a topic. They talk to a few people, and with the current political environment, everything they hear is agenda driven. Spend your information gathering time in a more productive way. If you really feel you need to be up to date, read the week in review section of one of the national newspapers.
• mikeshank 6y ago
  It's not like the "news" is the source of truth etched in stone, is it? I imagine most people were reading and probably understanding the "news" in March. That's when Dr. Fauci, the U.S. Surgeon General, the World Health Organization, and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all made "news" by stating there was no reason people in the U.S. needed to wear a mask. Politicians making the "news" by eating in Chinese restaurants. I recall the "news" taking time to chastise the hoi polloi who chose to ignore the "news" and wore masks anyway. I think the general mantra was something on the order of "masks only help frontline professionals, blah blah blah... you uniformed morons". I'm sure it's healthy to have a healthy skepticism of the "news".