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> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and in

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

paganel 11mo ago
[flagged]
- dmos62 11mo ago
  I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.
  - messe 11mo ago
    Yeah, I have a number of coworkers that have shared with me that they are on psychiatric medications, and have discussed mental health with. It's becoming normalized, and that's a good thing.
  - mewpmewp2 11mo ago
    I think in many places there's now enough of critical mass where people are understanding enough and call out anyone who uses that information negatively towards the person.
  - paganel 11mo ago
    > because I don't know that any of them did This is telling in itself.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
    It’s still definitely a big deal. Note that the CIA and the NSA routinely declare ex-employees that whistleblow or leak as “mentally ill.” It depends on the company. I worked for fairly “stolid” companies, for most of my career, and I suspect that they would treat mentally-ill people badly. Mental illness is something that, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with. I have severe mental illness in my family (I deal with it every day), and I spend a significant part of my life, interacting with folks at various stages of recovery from it. I have been seeing therapists for much of my life. When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with autism, but was never told, so I spent decades, trying to “fix” myself, before finding out. Once I found out that I was “on the spectrum,” I realized that it can’t be “fixed”; only mitigated, and things started improving quickly, at that point. That said, I think “mentally-ill” means “diagnosed and professionally-treated,” to most folks. It’s my opinion, that there’s a lot of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness out there. Just looking at the threads of interaction, on any Internet community, makes that clear. One “tell,” that I have encountered, is when someone has extremely strong opinions on psychiatry. It’s not something most folks even think about, so it’s unusual, when it’s a big deal to someone. Mental illness also tends to get worse, as we get older, if untreated. An “eccentric” young man, may become an old hermit, flying around, keeping his piss in canopic jars. Much of what we call “mental illness,” is actually self-developed coping mechanisms, in response to trauma, or brain-chemistry imbalance. That’s why getting medication doesn’t just “fix” us. We need to seek help in defusing the habits and rituals that were developed to help deal with the problem.
    - mewpmewp2 11mo ago
      I think the problem with "mental illness" is that I think in many cases it's the environment that is not suitable. In modern times we've created this environment that just doesn't fit all archetypes of people and those who it doesn't fit well with, we declare "mentally ill". There are obviously actual serious issues, but I believe a lot of it has to do with environment. It's not a clear illness like diabetes, etc. For instance I couldn't handle going to school, people can label it ADHD or Autism, but does it make sense in the first place to force me to study specific things that I don't care about as opposed to playing into my interests and strengths. I'm glad I'm grown up now, and can decide to learn what I'm actually interested in and do it 100x more effective per unit of time, as opposed to in school.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
        I agree with this. One of the issues I face, with my family member, is that they can’t handle stress, well. I have found that we only advance, when we are outside our “comfort zone.” As long as everything is copacetic, there’s no need to improve. But a “comfort zone” is a “fuzzy” quality. Too far out, is “trauma.” Different folks handle discomfort and trauma, in a variety of ways. I do think our families and support systems, can make a huge difference. For myself, being “on the spectrum” has really been an asset, in many ways. I have always learned technology quickly, but I’m a high school dropout with a GED, and almost all my education has been self-directed. Most of my life has been spent “outside my comfort zone.”
        mewpmewp2 11mo ago
        Yeah, that's complicated. I guess from my own experience related to stress and going out of comfort zone what I can speak to is that I have trouble going out of comfort zone when I'm doing something I'm not interested in and when I feel like I have to pretend that I'm someone I'm not. E.g. normal social situations where I have to pretend that I have favourite food, favourite place to go, or I even know places. I zone out on 90%+ topics, and I can't understand why on earth people are talking about these things. But if I'm passionate about something, I will be excited to present to a large audience, to go through things that you might consider going out of comfort zone, be competitive etc. Now in school I had so many situations where I had to "be out of comfort zone" in things I wasn't interested in. Social situations I didn't enjoy. I left things to last minute, then stressed, lost confidence, massively. Eventually dropped out of high school. Luckily managed to get a successful career going where I've been passionately moving forward, and this has massively boosted my confidence too. Now I'm a successful member of society, make quite a bit, pay taxes, etc, and can build the exact life that I want and works out best for me.
- akimbostrawman 11mo ago
  >huge taboo to have your employer or your fellow co-workers know that you have been institutionalized in the past for mental health problems Depend if you have the right trendy label that HR is in love with then you will get more and better jobs because if it.
- fatbluntbandit 11mo ago
  [dead]
nephihaha 11mo ago
What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.
- falcor84 11mo ago
  I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse. There's a stoic quote I love: > our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them - Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let... The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
  - mewpmewp2 11mo ago
    I guess the question is -> why do we need that guard in the first place? Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
    - ben_w 11mo ago
      > Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school? Yes to both. Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
      - 11mo ago
apples_oranges 11mo ago
I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...
- wiseowise 11mo ago
  > Too much psychology talk in every day life I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
  - tossandthrow 11mo ago
    In all fairness, the internet is for many people a near 100% part of their life. Especially for people working remotely without a family.
    - koakuma-chan 11mo ago
      HN is like 70% of my life.
      - pxc 11mo ago
        I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(
        koakuma-chan 11mo ago
        I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
        pxc 11mo ago
        I feel that. I wish the same.
joshcsimmons 11mo ago
That's right. I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech". Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.
- vacuity 11mo ago
  In the instance of your simulator, I think this is moreso due to the popular idea that people in tech tend to be autistic and the cultural desire to be part of the ingroup, rather than a snub at autistic people/men.
- aspenmayer 11mo ago
  > I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?
FireBeyond 11mo ago
Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or treatment or to even acknowledge, instead of outright deny, any mental health challenges, for fear of anything from seeming weak to being ostracized.
- baumy 11mo ago
  From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos? I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear. As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
- johnsmith1840 11mo ago
  My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries. Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists. Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways. or Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
- tossandthrow 11mo ago
  I agree that there is some support that working with your problems create them. As written in a sibling thread, I am mostly concerned with the relative visibility of issues as that creates equal opportunity. The implication of not focusing on men's issues is that we can not focus on women's issues either. Good luck fighting for that.

> One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems. (emphasis is mine) I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.

paganel 11mo ago

[flagged]

dmos62 11mo ago
I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.
- messe 11mo ago
  Yeah, I have a number of coworkers that have shared with me that they are on psychiatric medications, and have discussed mental health with. It's becoming normalized, and that's a good thing.
- mewpmewp2 11mo ago
  I think in many places there's now enough of critical mass where people are understanding enough and call out anyone who uses that information negatively towards the person.
- paganel 11mo ago
  > because I don't know that any of them did This is telling in itself.
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
  It’s still definitely a big deal. Note that the CIA and the NSA routinely declare ex-employees that whistleblow or leak as “mentally ill.” It depends on the company. I worked for fairly “stolid” companies, for most of my career, and I suspect that they would treat mentally-ill people badly. Mental illness is something that, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with. I have severe mental illness in my family (I deal with it every day), and I spend a significant part of my life, interacting with folks at various stages of recovery from it. I have been seeing therapists for much of my life. When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with autism, but was never told, so I spent decades, trying to “fix” myself, before finding out. Once I found out that I was “on the spectrum,” I realized that it can’t be “fixed”; only mitigated, and things started improving quickly, at that point. That said, I think “mentally-ill” means “diagnosed and professionally-treated,” to most folks. It’s my opinion, that there’s a lot of undiagnosed/untreated mental illness out there. Just looking at the threads of interaction, on any Internet community, makes that clear. One “tell,” that I have encountered, is when someone has extremely strong opinions on psychiatry. It’s not something most folks even think about, so it’s unusual, when it’s a big deal to someone. Mental illness also tends to get worse, as we get older, if untreated. An “eccentric” young man, may become an old hermit, flying around, keeping his piss in canopic jars. Much of what we call “mental illness,” is actually self-developed coping mechanisms, in response to trauma, or brain-chemistry imbalance. That’s why getting medication doesn’t just “fix” us. We need to seek help in defusing the habits and rituals that were developed to help deal with the problem.
  - mewpmewp2 11mo ago
    I think the problem with "mental illness" is that I think in many cases it's the environment that is not suitable. In modern times we've created this environment that just doesn't fit all archetypes of people and those who it doesn't fit well with, we declare "mentally ill". There are obviously actual serious issues, but I believe a lot of it has to do with environment. It's not a clear illness like diabetes, etc. For instance I couldn't handle going to school, people can label it ADHD or Autism, but does it make sense in the first place to force me to study specific things that I don't care about as opposed to playing into my interests and strengths. I'm glad I'm grown up now, and can decide to learn what I'm actually interested in and do it 100x more effective per unit of time, as opposed to in school.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
      I agree with this. One of the issues I face, with my family member, is that they can’t handle stress, well. I have found that we only advance, when we are outside our “comfort zone.” As long as everything is copacetic, there’s no need to improve. But a “comfort zone” is a “fuzzy” quality. Too far out, is “trauma.” Different folks handle discomfort and trauma, in a variety of ways. I do think our families and support systems, can make a huge difference. For myself, being “on the spectrum” has really been an asset, in many ways. I have always learned technology quickly, but I’m a high school dropout with a GED, and almost all my education has been self-directed. Most of my life has been spent “outside my comfort zone.”
      - mewpmewp2 11mo ago
        Yeah, that's complicated. I guess from my own experience related to stress and going out of comfort zone what I can speak to is that I have trouble going out of comfort zone when I'm doing something I'm not interested in and when I feel like I have to pretend that I'm someone I'm not. E.g. normal social situations where I have to pretend that I have favourite food, favourite place to go, or I even know places. I zone out on 90%+ topics, and I can't understand why on earth people are talking about these things. But if I'm passionate about something, I will be excited to present to a large audience, to go through things that you might consider going out of comfort zone, be competitive etc. Now in school I had so many situations where I had to "be out of comfort zone" in things I wasn't interested in. Social situations I didn't enjoy. I left things to last minute, then stressed, lost confidence, massively. Eventually dropped out of high school. Luckily managed to get a successful career going where I've been passionately moving forward, and this has massively boosted my confidence too. Now I'm a successful member of society, make quite a bit, pay taxes, etc, and can build the exact life that I want and works out best for me.
akimbostrawman 11mo ago
>huge taboo to have your employer or your fellow co-workers know that you have been institutionalized in the past for mental health problems Depend if you have the right trendy label that HR is in love with then you will get more and better jobs because if it.
fatbluntbandit 11mo ago
[dead]

nephihaha 11mo ago

What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.

falcor84 11mo ago
I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse. There's a stoic quote I love: > our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them - Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let... The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
- mewpmewp2 11mo ago
  I guess the question is -> why do we need that guard in the first place? Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school? Yes to both. Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
    - 11mo ago

apples_oranges 11mo ago

I neither like the taboo nor the opposite. Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...

wiseowise 11mo ago
> Too much psychology talk in every day life I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
- tossandthrow 11mo ago
  In all fairness, the internet is for many people a near 100% part of their life. Especially for people working remotely without a family.
  - koakuma-chan 11mo ago
    HN is like 70% of my life.
    - pxc 11mo ago
      I also spend what feels to me like a lot of time here. I like it, despite its problems. But HN isn't good enough to deserve to be 70% of anyone's life. :(
      - koakuma-chan 11mo ago
        I agree, but it's 12:10 PM, and I am in my third meeting, pretending to pay attention. I wish the job market improved.
        pxc 11mo ago
        I feel that. I wish the same.

joshcsimmons 11mo ago

That's right. I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech". Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.

vacuity 11mo ago
In the instance of your simulator, I think this is moreso due to the popular idea that people in tech tend to be autistic and the cultural desire to be part of the ingroup, rather than a snub at autistic people/men.
aspenmayer 11mo ago
> I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?

FireBeyond 11mo ago

Right. Even here in HN I was arguing with someone who has the hot take that “more conservative leaning men have less mental health issues than liberal and left leaning men and I don’t think we do enough to think about why exactly that might be and what those liberal men could do differently”, and got very angry when I suggested that maybe the reason for that was that conservative men were less likely to seek help or treatment or to even acknowledge, instead of outright deny, any mental health challenges, for fear of anything from seeming weak to being ostracized.

baumy 11mo ago
From experience, my response to this is, por que no los dos? I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear. As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
johnsmith1840 11mo ago
My controverial opinion is that the "left" has more mental problems because of the therapy and pharmasutical industries. Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists. Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways. or Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
tossandthrow 11mo ago
I agree that there is some support that working with your problems create them. As written in a sibling thread, I am mostly concerned with the relative visibility of issues as that creates equal opportunity. The implication of not focusing on men's issues is that we can not focus on women's issues either. Good luck fighting for that.