The drive is that I've had serious bouts of depression in my life and this is the advice that got me out of it. it's far from the worst possible advice! validat

The drive is that I've had serious bouts of depression in my life and this is the advice that got me out of it. it's far from the worst possible advice! validating depression as important is often more harmful than helpful. Think it through a bit - what's more likely to make you more depressed? A) being told you're so screwed up you need professional help so jot down the number of a suicide hotline and a qualified therapist or B) being treated as an equal that doesn't need coddling and given real world advice that might actually help yourself and others and maybe even be fun? Think about that and related ideas... how many people do you think jumped off the golden gate bridge because some guy wasn't sufficiently sensitive on some internet forum? how many people end up with gradually increasing symptoms of depression because of this cultural inclination to distance ourselves and focus on the negativity until we've had enough "therapy", when often the best solution is to get out of bed, break the cycle and let ourselves heal in peace? That can be the hardest thing in the world, but engaging in life is really the best solution. Do you really think that IF OP needs therapy or an emergency hotline, that the best solution is to get that advice from some random strange on HN? OP is obviously collected and intelligent enough to write a coherent post on HN about this. I gave direct, actionable advice and I'm saying that OP is a smart, capable person with the ability to do good in the world who doesn't need to be coddled like a 12 year old. How likely is it that when one is asking HN for advice, one hasn't heard this same boilerplate drivel? I took time out of my day to think out both of these posts and try to find something original. OP has probably been trying to deal with this many different ways and maybe my way isn't his way, but it's more likely to be helpful than some crap you can find by googling depression for 5 minutes. I chose to get involved for that reason and I'm here participating in the thread for followup if it resonated with OP. The therapy and emergency hotline approach is obnoxiously bad - great advice if your employee comes to you and you want to avoid legal entanglement, not particularly good in reality... if you're at the point of posting on HN, you probably have thought about going to a therapist right? So are you really helping or hurting by giving that advice, probably for the 100th time? "man up" means acting according to typical masculine values of practicality and altruism : get out of bed, go find someone with real life and death problems and help them. It means just think about the next hour or the next minute and do something helpful for other human beings. This builds a support network, fires the social parts of the brain, level sets how bad things can get in the world and how much one smart guy can actually matter and gives a direct resource (boys and girls club) to follow up. ... also I explicitly discussed the intellectual, emotional and physical aspects of depression in there... it's a self reinforcing loop.