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As someone who has struggled and is currently struggling from depression, posts like this scare me because I think they are spreading a misunderstanding of what

by cuca123 13y ago

As someone who has struggled and is currently struggling from depression, posts like this scare me because I think they are spreading a misunderstanding of what depression is. The article explains some ideas about why programmers as a whole are under-appreciated. But having your work be under-appreciated has very very very little to do with being depressed. I am an engineer, and almost my entire social circle is technical as well. I've found that it's hard for friends to understand just how utterly irrational depression is. Being sad because something bad happened isn't depression. Being tired because you haven't been sleeping well isn't depression. And being un-motivated because you are under-appreciated isn't depression. Yes, bad things happening, poor sleep, and under-appreciation can trigger or contribute to depression. And I don't doubt that the author is hurting and struggling and needs and deserves our help. I'm just scared when we oversimplify depression, and try to explain it away. Depression is as nuanced as it is awful.

mikeash 13y ago
People's general understanding of mental illness is still stuck in the dark ages. Imagine if this article was about brain cancer, but all the rest was the same. The overwhelming reaction would be, this is stupid, brain cancer happens due to genetic factors, exposure to carcinogens, radiation, etc., and obviously has nothing to do with people appreciating your work. Only the fruitiest of the alternative medicine fruit would even write such an article in the first place. But make it depression instead of brain cancer, and then not only does the article get written, but gets a lot of "hmm, maybe he's on to something" responses. It's wrong, it's dangerous, and it's terrifyingly common.
- ssdfsdf 13y ago
  I don't agree. I was clinically depressed in my early twenties. There is a temptation to reduce the world to simple bite sized physical causes. With something like brain cancer this may be appropriate - but perhaps not, it may be that stress levels induced by a working environment may influence the chances of developing the disease. The point is there is a complex network of interactions which include emotional reactions to your environment, which can drive a person into a depressed state. It may be that for some proportion of those that suffer from depression that the cause is purely chemical imbalance driven by phenotypic makeup. But I suspect this is rare, we are a complex system of interacting components and these components include our own internal way of viewing the world. There is something tempting about reducing complex issues which have implications about the way we live our lives (like ADHD, Depression, etc) to simple physical reductionist causation. It is not a correct way of viewing the world and should be resisted.
Tenhundfeld 13y ago
Yes, exactly. Thank you. For me, depression/mania is like a volume dial on life. Normal is groovin' to the music, bippin' and boppin' along to the ups and downs. Mania is the music cranked up to 11, the frenetic beat driving you, compelling you, controlling you. Depression is the world put on mute, nothing to connect with; you're drowning in silence. At the risk of belaboring this metaphor, depression is not listening to the blues; depression is a bubble of dead air, where you see other people enjoying music you can't hear and you don't know why.* That's why I think the phrase "feeling depressed" is almost oxymoronic. You can feel unhappy or tired or something. When you're depressed, you're not feeling much of anything. You're just trying to exist in this apathetic, foggy cloud of pain and vague guilt.* What's weird about depression is that the causes and symptoms are all mixed up a big feedback loop – unlike brain cancer (mentioned elsewhere in this thread). In the throes of depression, most people 1) do not exercise 2) have really erratic sleep schedules 3) do not eat healthy. If you could somehow reverse each of those symptoms, the underlying cause usually improves too. The problem, of course, is that no depressed person has the will or energy to do any of those things – even if they do them when they're not in the midst of a down cycle. And obviously, chemical or physical (ECT) intervention is absolutely required for some people. But kind of like code duplication, treating the symptoms treats the disease too, for many cases. It comes back to something Alan Watts said. Humans like to try to separate ourselves from reality, differentiate between the experiencer and the experience, but of course, experiencing the experience is just part of the experience! Thus, if you change the experience (treat the symptoms), you also change the experiencer (affect/improve the disease). * Depression is different for each person. These are just metaphors/ideas I've used in the past that people have identified with.
dorfuss 13y ago
Thank you for this comment. Very true. Depression should be though of as a serious, dangerous and dreadful condition that has claimed so many lives. That being said I don't dare to judge if the author of the article is depressed or not.

by cuca123 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago

People's general understanding of mental illness is still stuck in the dark ages. Imagine if this article was about brain cancer, but all the rest was the same. The overwhelming reaction would be, this is stupid, brain cancer happens due to genetic factors, exposure to carcinogens, radiation, etc., and obviously has nothing to do with people appreciating your work. Only the fruitiest of the alternative medicine fruit would even write such an article in the first place. But make it depression instead of brain cancer, and then not only does the article get written, but gets a lot of "hmm, maybe he's on to something" responses. It's wrong, it's dangerous, and it's terrifyingly common.

ssdfsdf 13y ago
I don't agree. I was clinically depressed in my early twenties. There is a temptation to reduce the world to simple bite sized physical causes. With something like brain cancer this may be appropriate - but perhaps not, it may be that stress levels induced by a working environment may influence the chances of developing the disease. The point is there is a complex network of interactions which include emotional reactions to your environment, which can drive a person into a depressed state. It may be that for some proportion of those that suffer from depression that the cause is purely chemical imbalance driven by phenotypic makeup. But I suspect this is rare, we are a complex system of interacting components and these components include our own internal way of viewing the world. There is something tempting about reducing complex issues which have implications about the way we live our lives (like ADHD, Depression, etc) to simple physical reductionist causation. It is not a correct way of viewing the world and should be resisted.

Tenhundfeld 13y ago

Yes, exactly. Thank you. For me, depression/mania is like a volume dial on life. Normal is groovin' to the music, bippin' and boppin' along to the ups and downs. Mania is the music cranked up to 11, the frenetic beat driving you, compelling you, controlling you. Depression is the world put on mute, nothing to connect with; you're drowning in silence. At the risk of belaboring this metaphor, depression is not listening to the blues; depression is a bubble of dead air, where you see other people enjoying music you can't hear and you don't know why.* That's why I think the phrase "feeling depressed" is almost oxymoronic. You can feel unhappy or tired or something. When you're depressed, you're not feeling much of anything. You're just trying to exist in this apathetic, foggy cloud of pain and vague guilt.* What's weird about depression is that the causes and symptoms are all mixed up a big feedback loop – unlike brain cancer (mentioned elsewhere in this thread). In the throes of depression, most people 1) do not exercise 2) have really erratic sleep schedules 3) do not eat healthy. If you could somehow reverse each of those symptoms, the underlying cause usually improves too. The problem, of course, is that no depressed person has the will or energy to do any of those things – even if they do them when they're not in the midst of a down cycle. And obviously, chemical or physical (ECT) intervention is absolutely required for some people. But kind of like code duplication, treating the symptoms treats the disease too, for many cases. It comes back to something Alan Watts said. Humans like to try to separate ourselves from reality, differentiate between the experiencer and the experience, but of course, experiencing the experience is just part of the experience! Thus, if you change the experience (treat the symptoms), you also change the experiencer (affect/improve the disease). * Depression is different for each person. These are just metaphors/ideas I've used in the past that people have identified with.

dorfuss 13y ago

Thank you for this comment. Very true. Depression should be though of as a serious, dangerous and dreadful condition that has claimed so many lives. That being said I don't dare to judge if the author of the article is depressed or not.