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There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”. Functionally, depression

There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”. Functionally, depression is a reduction in the set of actions that one can take. For some, it can be bad enough that “fill out this form, make this phone call, write the reference number on the form then post it” is too much. No, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. That's why it's called a mental illness. Sure, they could “just try harder” except oops, that's not on the list either. (See http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html for a good analogy.) Many depressed people come up with psychological tricks to move necessary tasks from the “unavailable actions” category to the “available actions” category. Possibly the best one I've heard is the “shower heist”: it's not “taking a shower”, it's grand theft of the clean. If you think depression is “just laziness”, why would someone go to all the effort of reframing basic actions in this way? So please, none of that.

gverrilla 5y ago
I agree except for: >No, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. That's why it's called a mental illness. That's not the reason it's called a mental illness. It's called an illness because it's a source of suffering. Also, of course there's a reason - otherwise it wouldn't happen.
smoldesu 5y ago
I think the larger sentiment (and you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong) is that dealing with depressed people is tiring. I have a few friends who deal with chronic depression, and getting their input on things or checking up on them is always a production. I still greatly appreciate their position in my life, but my sanity (and patience) is finite. More often than not, I'm equally (if not more) helpless, which makes it extremely difficult to disengage or move the discussion forwards. I welcome an honest dialogue around mental health, but a dialogue requires two people to be dynamic. If the two become mutually incompatible, then there's effectively no way for me to contribute.
abnry 5y ago
> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. There is a lot of people who don't seem to know what depression is because no one really knows what is depression. It is complex, it is multi-faceted, it can be subtle, it can be overt. It varies from person to person. It varies in causes.
mahathu 5y ago
"Depression" is more the term our medical community has today to describe low mood, lack of energy, loss of interest et al. It's important to understand that there exists no weird illness that is causing these symptoms. Instead, the symptoms can have all sorts of roots, but depression is just what we call them.
- anoncake 5y ago
  It's similar to how before modern medicine, everything was a fever.
carapace 5y ago
I suffered from bad depression in my youth. Couldn't get a haircut or buy new shoes, things like that. I think the worst moment came when I was so depressed I just stood there in my room. I couldn't even lie down. No way to explain that to a normal person. One day my mom said, "I know you're not faking this because no one would deliberately be this miserable." It was more comforting than you might imagine. - - - - (I debated adding this because I don't want to get drawn into an argument about my own personal history, but FWIW I was cured completely in a single session of hypnotherapy that lasted less than ten minutes. The therapist was Dr. Richard Bandler, co-inventor of Neurolinguistic Programming. (Yes, the NLP that is decried as "pseudoscience".))
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Unless you're dealing with con artists, the “pseudo” in “psuedoscience” is usually the explanation. I don't doubt Freud was able to help a lot of people, but I do doubt his explanations of what it was exactly that helped, and why.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    The issues is that we are missing the "why" of how most antidepressants work... so do they also qualify as pseudoscience? In my mind, psuedoscience isn't just missing the "why/how it works" but also the "who/when it helps" and as a result don't have clear statistical backing.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      We know the why is “because the antidepressants were taken”. But antidepressants only work sometimes – different antidepressants work for different people! We don't know the true, fundamental reason, but at least we've pinned it down a bit. I call something pseudoscience when the “why” is “pinned down” as something wholly unrelated, and the people involved haven't noticed; if they were doing science instead of just theorising, they would've noticed. (We agree, but we're using different words.)
mdoms 5y ago
> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. > Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”. I always see these comments in threads about depression but I almost never see people actually making the comments in question. Can you point to an example in this thread?
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  They were mostly dead'd, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543212 is the example that prompted me to write this.

gverrilla 5y ago

I agree except for: >No, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. That's why it's called a mental illness. That's not the reason it's called a mental illness. It's called an illness because it's a source of suffering. Also, of course there's a reason - otherwise it wouldn't happen.

smoldesu 5y ago

I think the larger sentiment (and you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong) is that dealing with depressed people is tiring. I have a few friends who deal with chronic depression, and getting their input on things or checking up on them is always a production. I still greatly appreciate their position in my life, but my sanity (and patience) is finite. More often than not, I'm equally (if not more) helpless, which makes it extremely difficult to disengage or move the discussion forwards. I welcome an honest dialogue around mental health, but a dialogue requires two people to be dynamic. If the two become mutually incompatible, then there's effectively no way for me to contribute.

abnry 5y ago

> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. There is a lot of people who don't seem to know what depression is because no one really knows what is depression. It is complex, it is multi-faceted, it can be subtle, it can be overt. It varies from person to person. It varies in causes.

mahathu 5y ago

"Depression" is more the term our medical community has today to describe low mood, lack of energy, loss of interest et al. It's important to understand that there exists no weird illness that is causing these symptoms. Instead, the symptoms can have all sorts of roots, but depression is just what we call them.

anoncake 5y ago
It's similar to how before modern medicine, everything was a fever.

carapace 5y ago

I suffered from bad depression in my youth. Couldn't get a haircut or buy new shoes, things like that. I think the worst moment came when I was so depressed I just stood there in my room. I couldn't even lie down. No way to explain that to a normal person. One day my mom said, "I know you're not faking this because no one would deliberately be this miserable." It was more comforting than you might imagine. - - - - (I debated adding this because I don't want to get drawn into an argument about my own personal history, but FWIW I was cured completely in a single session of hypnotherapy that lasted less than ten minutes. The therapist was Dr. Richard Bandler, co-inventor of Neurolinguistic Programming. (Yes, the NLP that is decried as "pseudoscience".))

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Unless you're dealing with con artists, the “pseudo” in “psuedoscience” is usually the explanation. I don't doubt Freud was able to help a lot of people, but I do doubt his explanations of what it was exactly that helped, and why.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  The issues is that we are missing the "why" of how most antidepressants work... so do they also qualify as pseudoscience? In my mind, psuedoscience isn't just missing the "why/how it works" but also the "who/when it helps" and as a result don't have clear statistical backing.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    We know the why is “because the antidepressants were taken”. But antidepressants only work sometimes – different antidepressants work for different people! We don't know the true, fundamental reason, but at least we've pinned it down a bit. I call something pseudoscience when the “why” is “pinned down” as something wholly unrelated, and the people involved haven't noticed; if they were doing science instead of just theorising, they would've noticed. (We agree, but we're using different words.)

mdoms 5y ago

> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is. > Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”. I always see these comments in threads about depression but I almost never see people actually making the comments in question. Can you point to an example in this thread?

wizzwizz4 5y ago
They were mostly dead'd, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543212 is the example that prompted me to write this.