[HN Gopher] A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxi...
___________________________________________________________________
A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or
depression
Author : xoxoy
Score : 226 points
Date : 2020-05-27 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| [deleted]
| supercanuck wrote:
| I mean how much data and analysis do we really need at this point
| to realize America is a complete shit show at the moment.
|
| Statistics be damned, Inductive Reasoning needs to take center
| stage here.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Ah, very insightful.
|
| Is there a consensus on what makes it bad and how it should be
| remedied?
| ikeyany wrote:
| There is a strong consensus from the American people that
| tying health care to your employer is fucked up. There is
| also a consensus that adults should be able to make a living
| wage, even if a few people's yachts are a bit smaller.
|
| But consensus does not equate to political will or political
| power.
| all2 wrote:
| Well, yes.
|
| For the last four years I've been hearing about this orange
| cartoon character and what an awful impact he's had. There
| was something about Russia and the orange man, but that went
| away after about 3 years. Then the orange man was taking
| credit for some other guy's economic expansion. Now there's
| this virus thing, and I'm hearing the orange man is making a
| terrible job of it.
|
| According to my sources, the remedy is to remove the orange
| man.
| Applejinx wrote:
| That's a start. Also, this is the first I've heard that
| Russia went away. Where ever did it go? And who told you
| that it was gone? Seems like a pretty big (and historically
| well understood...) thing, and most unlikely to randomly
| disappear.
| coliveira wrote:
| Justice decided they cannot/don't want do anything about
| it and the Republican dominated senate decided they don't
| want to hold the president accountable for anything.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It depends how much you trust your sources about the
| cartoon character.
| admiral33 wrote:
| Both sides believe the other is entirely a product of
| propaganda and group think. They are both correct.
| supercanuck wrote:
| 42.
| jjice wrote:
| I'd like to see anxiety and depression rates associated with age
| and social media usage. In my personal experience, social media
| gave me a lot more negative feeling than positive. I know a lot
| of people handle it better than I do, but I'd still like to see.
|
| I'm also curious if this is associated with more diagnoses
| because we've become more aware of these issues as a society, or
| if this can be associated with the internet and our modern
| "always on" lives. My guess is that the former is more of a
| reason, but I'd love to see some studies in this area.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| In las vegas, our unemployment rate is very close to hitting a
| third so. No surprise there.
| Exmoor wrote:
| http://archive.vn/7dj2r
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Though this is a troubling outcome, the questions asked seem a
| little vague for the times. Basically everyone will "feel down"
| or "feel nervous" given the risk facing them and their loved
| ones.
|
| I feel nervous every time I go to the grocery store, but it would
| need to be causing problems in my life to be clinical anxiety.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| As an American it's not surprising at all. Six figures of student
| loan debt, job insecurity, healthcare insecurity, rampant poverty
| / homelessness, the most despicable president to disgrace the
| white house (who didn't even win the popular vote), stay-at-home
| orders because the U.S. couldn't manage the crisis, lack of
| community (doesn't help that 99% of the country is sprawl),
| rampant obesity, and general lack of hope. The U.S. is more and
| more resembling a failed state, a mere shadow of what it used to
| be.
| guevara wrote:
| It's all perspective bro. "Muh Drumpf, muh loans, muh XYZ
| reasons that are just an excuse to hate the world, feel sorry
| for myself and not take responsibility for my life. Woe is me
| and woe is the world!"
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| What a perfect encapsulation of the individualism that drives
| the special American breed of blame-the-victim mentality. It
| allows society to erode the well-being of huge swaths of the
| population while simultaneously making them feel _ashamed_ of
| their inability to triumph over the ruthless machine grinding
| them into the dirt.
|
| Yes, we need personal responsibility, but maybe we could also
| stop making it _harder_ for people to eke out a decent
| living. Maybe then we could rightfully claim the title of
| "the land of opportunity". As of now, we rank lower than
| dozens of other industrialized countries in terms of social
| mobility and economic equality.
| [deleted]
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Don't forget the internet and the constant FOMO and comparisons
| to people at their best points in life, or the fact that the
| social dynamics of dating have gotten crazy.
|
| Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized
| proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder,
| while even median men are mostly ignored.
|
| America is in the worst shape in the West, but these trends are
| getting worse here in Canada and elsewhere too.
| rwc wrote:
| uh "Attractive, fit, intelligent" seems like a winning
| combination regardless of the era.
| sdwa wrote:
| I agree about the toxicity of social media, it's why I don't
| have an Instagram and, well, Facebook is dead among my
| generation anyway so it's not an issue.
|
| >Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized
| proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder,
| while even median men are mostly ignored.
|
| Is this a real problem though? I've heard about how women
| rate most men as below average, yada yada, but monogamy is
| still dominant, it's not like these hot men are building
| harems---on aggregate the vast majority will end up with a
| life partner, just as always. Am I missing something?
| sometw wrote:
| You're missing a few pieces that contribute to the decay of
| society:
|
| - No they don't build harems, but they are more likely to
| wait before settling down with a long term partner.
|
| Also, perhaps it's the circles I've run in, but monogomy is
| far less dominant than it was in the past, and serial
| dating is far more common, especially when you start
| looking at some folks interpretations of 'empowerment'. I'm
| using airquotes here because I'm thinking of someone who
| would literally always be 'getting over' her last
| relationship with her current one, but would be checking
| OKCupid and POF because they were starting to have doubts
| about the current one.
|
| There's a question of how much psychological damage online
| dating scene does to how one deals with interpersonal
| relationships. Most of the 'serial' daters I know get more
| and more bitter with every failed date, and post more and
| more vitrol on social media about the opposite gender.
|
| There's also the issue that Dating profiles really often
| remove so much of the important part of a relationship;
| getting to know someone, which is a good test of
| communication.
| [deleted]
| ping_pong wrote:
| This sounds like the philosophy that drives the incel groups.
|
| If you were to ask women they would say the exact same thing
| as well. And internet dating is very heavily driven towards
| superficial things, whereas if you meet someone IRL you might
| be able to find things to connect on.
| troughway wrote:
| >And internet dating is very heavily driven towards
| superficial things
|
| No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just
| mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh. Some people
| might find things that certain people want superficial, but
| that's ascribing morality to a very biological and carnal
| need.
| naasking wrote:
| > No, internet dating is no different than real life, it
| just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh.
|
| It's a little different. People are typically more polite
| in person. Their behaviour online reflects what they
| would do if there were no consequences.
| all2 wrote:
| > Attractive, fit, intelligent men
|
| By and large these are results of choices people make, not
| accidents.
|
| A guy with visible abs didn't just wake up one day and have
| abs. He put in the work. Same goes for attractive or
| intelligent.
|
| Taking time to find clothes that fit, discovering a
| flattering hair style, and generally not being a slob can put
| an average man into the "attractive" group.
|
| By intelligent, I mean "witty" or a good conversationalist.
| Wit/conversation are learned skills. Yeah, some people are
| better at it than others, but you can still learn.
|
| Don't feel trapped on the outside. You can be excellent if
| you so choose.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Read these books:
|
| 1. How to win friends and influence people 2. The Art of
| Seduction 3. She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to
| Pleasuring a Woman
|
| They all seem like terrible/manipulative books, but read
| them anyways. Glean what fits your ethics.
|
| In terms of online dating: work out, buy nice clothes, get
| 2-3 good photos. Or don't do online dating and go out to
| the same (mixed gender) place over and over for a while.
|
| It's all work. It sucks. Good luck.
|
| If the above is too much, beat Dark Souls, then try again.
| all2 wrote:
| Two books that have been useful to me are "No More Mr.
| Nice Guy" and "When I Say No I Feel Guilty".
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I didn't feel right about putting it in my original
| comment, since it didn't seem relevant and honestly it
| feels weird to type this out on HN, but I'm attractive.
| Before Tinder and Bumble I didn't have trouble dating but
| now it's crazy. It's effortless to get dates with
| attractive, successful women. Things didn't used to be this
| imbalanced and I don't think it is completely fair to say
| to someone with a less attractive face or to someone that
| isn't over six feet that they should learn how to dress
| properly and that will sort things out for them. Yes
| exercise and proper nutrition go a long way, and I tell
| multiple people a month about the basics of nutrition[0] or
| about how to exercise[1] but I don't pretend that this will
| fix everything. I think it is important that lucky people
| are honest about the current situation.
|
| [0] Way more fibre, no refined sugar, more protein, no
| transfats.
|
| [1] Bike to get around and
| http://reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness
| aianus wrote:
| > Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized
| proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder,
| while even median men are mostly ignored.
|
| I exported my data from Tinder and I've had to swipe 25,000
| times per successful long-term relationship.
|
| That's a pretty terrible ratio but it only works out to ~10
| hours of swiping and another ~10 hours of dating per
| successful relationship that lasts months or years (or maybe
| forever!)
|
| As a result I've only been single for a small minority of my
| adult life.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| "Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized
| proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder,
| while even median men are mostly ignored."
|
| Is that even true? I am not very pretty (but fit and some
| level of intelligence ) . When I did online dating I had no
| problems connecting to women around my age and with similar
| attributes. Most guys who were complaining wanted a
| supermodel half their age. And they were surprised that they
| only attracted crazy people that way.
| troughway wrote:
| Yes, OkCupid did a study awhile back which they
| unfortunately took down. You can still find archived
| versions of it.
| gxon wrote:
| Is this the one? https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/ok
| cupid/yourlooksandyo...
| troughway wrote:
| That's the one.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| All of these are extreme and very myopic takes. 6 figures of
| student loan debt? That's < 5% of all borrowers (and many of
| those are post-grad education), 92% of Americans have
| healthcare and a fraction of the already small number of
| bankruptcies are _related_ to medical debt, poverty rate has
| been relatively steady since the 60s.
|
| Sure a lot of people hate Trump (I think if the media stopped
| talking about him, and he stopped tweeting that'd help a lot of
| anxiety - it's more media spin than his actual policy that
| seems to anger people), the US ranks better than most countries
| in Western Europe in terms of death rate per 1000, lack of
| community I'd agree with.
|
| My point is: if you shut off some of the news and social media,
| your perspective would likely drastically improve. Things
| aren't actually that terrible if you tune out all the
| alarmists.
| idoby wrote:
| As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white
| house so much? How does it affect your life concretely?
|
| Try watching less talking heads/browsing Twitter less, maybe,
| and you'll feel better?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > why do you care about who is in the white house so much
|
| He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's
| not just Twitter rants.
| tayo42 wrote:
| My taxes went up significantly because of this
| administration.
|
| It's sad to see the racist actions they take at borders.
|
| Trump is riling up groups of people with the things he says.
| vmchale wrote:
| > How does it affect your life concretely?
|
| Right now, he has tanked our country. We could have had a
| plan for the virus, and instead we are muzzling scientists.
| mjayhn wrote:
| A lot of people didn't think the guy in the white house could
| matter _that_ much until Trump. As a non-American a lot of
| Americans would likely be envious of your lifestyle right
| now. The 30 million currently unemployed for sure, the people
| who also can 't get to a hospital if they need surgery or
| healthcare because they're closed because of our botched (guy
| in wh) response care as well. The essential workers with no
| healthcare who are making an extra $2/hour to possibly die.
|
| This isn't a vaccuum in America. A lot of us have friends,
| family and coworkers affected by this.
|
| Even if I ignore the president or the news I'm still trapped
| inside my house for the most part. If I leave my house it's
| an experience figuring out whether something is open or not,
| what their rules are, etc.
|
| I mean I can go sit in my backyard and ignore the world but I
| still need to function day to day and right now I can't do
| half of my chores, errands, etc. So it's something definitely
| affecting my day to day.
|
| And I'm on the lucky end, I can wfh and sit here and respond
| to you. I can't imagine having to go to work at some gas
| station to pay rent right now.
|
| The guy in the white house isn't doing anything to calm
| anyones nerves or concerns. He's exacerbating them greatly.
| He has the largest microphone in the country, it's hard to
| ignore him or his affect on peoples mental health.
|
| Everywhere we look is a reminder of our failure of a
| government. It's on everyones mouths. Now imagine going to
| work and fixing bobscars.com database while this stuff is in
| your face everyday.
| idoby wrote:
| I'm sorry you feel this way, but it kind of feels to me
| like you're linking everything back to a political
| landscape that you don't like, but which doesn't have a lot
| to do with the current state of things.
|
| I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I
| realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under
| most possible govts.
| mjayhn wrote:
| > I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either,
| but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the
| same under most possible govts.
|
| We are literally in the polar opposite government than we
| were from 2008-2016.
|
| I don't think we'd be at 100k dead today if our
| government was different and responded properly. Is this
| what we're debating? Why did Hong Kong only have 4 deaths
| the last I looked a few days ago? The government and
| societal response?
|
| Maybe we're miscommunicating. Yeah, 90% of my life is the
| same but we all have friends and family affected by some
| part of it (healthcare or unemployment typically). The
| most mutual thing right now is our combined stress
| (except for the people partying at the beach).
| idoby wrote:
| Sorry to read that, mate. FWIW I don't think your
| government had a course of action that would have made a
| lot of difference. It caught everybody on the planet off
| guard and exhausted already-provisioned healthcare
| resources pretty fast.
| mjayhn wrote:
| When did you quarantine? Most States have only been
| closed for a month and now they're opening. This "didn't
| catch us offguard" it is more like "our leader didn't
| tell us how bad it was for 3 months while the rest of the
| world shut down so most of our businesses didn't close
| and it's worse than it should be". That's the government.
| It's coming from the top. Companies weren't going to
| close offices until govs/Pres told them to do so, they
| had NO idea what to do.
|
| Most of our Republican Govs will do whatever Trump tells
| them. That is the problem.
|
| I just moved out of a red state that acts like this is
| nothing to blue state that is almost completely shut down
| until next week and has had FAR FAR fewer cases.
|
| So yeah, I think government matters now.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| This is very true, as an American. There's almost no
| difference in the vast majority of daily life for most
| Americans if you just pretended like the president doesn't
| exist.
| cwperkins wrote:
| I can't say I share the same feelings as you, but it certainly
| would be great to see young Americans be more excited about the
| future and I think some big investment in infrastructure could
| be a way to make that happen. There are many people worse off
| in other Countries that are happy because they are seeing vast
| improvements year over year and their own value goes up
| proportionately to how much effort gets put in.
|
| We have low interest rates so I'd love to see shovel ready
| projects like the Gateway tunnels in NYC get off the ground.
| I'd love to see emerging industries in America get bigger like
| Robotics, new Energy Ventures, anything related to Space and
| Advanced Manufacturing.
|
| Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that there
| are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and just about
| everyone feels like they are under attack or have been
| violated. I want to create value with my life and hope that I
| can provide opportunity for others in the process. There are
| many culture wars things that are debated on social media that
| I see disingenuous actors from many angles that I need to drown
| out so I can focus on other things.
| malandrew wrote:
| > I think some big investment in infrastructure could be a
| way to make that happen
|
| I'm curious what infrastructure you think would excite young
| Americans. With the exception of changing energy generation
| from fossil fuels to renewables, I can't think of a single
| thing that I could generalize young Americans caring about,
| much less be excited about.
|
| Not saying that there aren't people like yourself and others
| that get excited about infrastructure, but is there anything
| that would excite more than just a tiny subset of us nerds
| that care about such things?
|
| > Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that
| there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and
| just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have
| been violated.
|
| I wholeheartedly agree that many feel this way, but how does
| getting excited about infrastructure projects address this?
| The root cause of people feeling this way is because they are
| constantly being told by the MSM and social media that they
| should feel this way.
| derg wrote:
| What future? What is there to be excited about? Can't
| actually spend money at the federal and state level aside
| from tax cuts and the military without being met with
| resistance and a subset of politicians and economists
| screaming bloody murder about super dooper hyper inflation
| that's _totally going to happen any day now we promise_ (but
| don 't worry about the last 40 years of us saying it, this
| time we're sure we're correct).
|
| We have low interest rates now. We _had_ low interest rates
| in 08 through the early 10 's too but the ~i n f l a t i o n~
| boogyman and super serious debt hawks said we couldn't do it,
| all while passing tax cuts and giving the military
| essentially unlimited money, while continuing to erode our
| rights.
|
| American infrastructure is beyond saving and will require new
| deal levels of spending to even get it to a shape resembling
| the amount of wealth this country has, and we are never going
| to do it because we live in an oligarchic state and the
| billionaires are fine, so why do we need to do anything more?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > it certainly would be great to see young Americans be more
| excited about the future and I think some big investment
|
| I don't think it's the fault of young Americans. It's more
| the fault of those in charge. We haven't been investing in
| young Americans like we did in the post WWII era. It's no
| wonder they're pessimistic given high amounts of student debt
| and political rulers that are basically trying to milk all
| the money out of the masses to enrich the themselves and
| their wealthy friends.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that
| there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and
| just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have
| been violated.
|
| its easy to feel that way when the news media from fox
| (especially) to cnn is pumping that stuff out daily as they
| almost seemingly yell at you from the screen...
| brighton36 wrote:
| this guy has it figured out: https://youtu.be/FM5HkpyXxsQ . We
| need to throw a party. It's time to celebrate. Emancipation is
| in sight.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > lack of community
|
| To a large extent we already had that in most of America.
| Suburbia is a very lonely place. See the book Bowling Alone.
| ikeyany wrote:
| Our cities and rural areas aren't exactly in a great state
| either. I would imagine the average resident of a dense city
| does not know the names of all of their next door neighbors.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| I would take sprawl over being trapped in an apartment for 2
| months.
| austincheney wrote:
| I suspect a third of Americans are now displaying symptoms of
| mental health disorders that were already present. Mental health
| disorders are drastically under reported in the US, and due to
| various stigmas most people are unwilling to except mental health
| illnesses as actual illnesses until they are prepared to harm
| someone.
|
| This is the number one problem most police officers deal with
| when engaging with the public. Many people have mental health
| disorders they are not aware of resulting in all manners of poor
| decisions and disorderly conduct. Some of these disorders are
| severe and demand medication and some are exaggerated by existing
| medications. I recommend talking with experienced police officers
| and listening to some of their war stories.
|
| My sister-in-law is also a managing mental health counselor and
| says the number of undiagnosed mental health disorders could
| represent as much as 40% of the population.
|
| In my own experience I find that people hide from this by
| frequently changing their social situation and environment
| through out the day, such as driving to an office. When you are
| stuck at home full time with nowhere to go suddenly coping and
| distraction mechanisms are gone which becomes clear to the
| coinhabitants. I am on my fifth military deployment so I have
| gone through this a few times, and you can readily see the people
| lacking of a regular rhythm of emotional stability and stress
| management. You are with these people all the time as you live,
| socialize, and work with them. On a military deployment you can't
| rely on a frequent change of scenery to hide your insanity.
|
| The most common example of excuse that people would hide behind
| pre-pandemic is finances. Bad financial situations are stressful,
| but stress is not a mental health disorder. Extreme stresses
| though often exacerbate pre-existing illnesses. In that regard
| bad finances don't produce mental health disorders as frequently
| as suggested but instead exaggerate pre-existing conditions that
| become more clearly identifiable.
|
| The difference between stress and a mental health disorder is
| something called _homeostasis_ , which is the ability of the
| brain to return to a state of regular emotional equilibrium
| following an incidence of high stress. The military refers to the
| cognitive process of actively maintaining homeostasis as
| _resiliency_ and it's part of our annual training. The inability
| to return to resume functions of prior behavior following a major
| stressor is likely the result of a mental health illness.
| ConcernedCoder wrote:
| What a world we live in...
|
| Tucker Carlson on Fox News yesterday tried to directly correlate
| the findings in this study to other news agency reports ( lies
| according to Tucker ) on the coronavirus... see the video @
| around 6:50ish headlining this story on Fox News:
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-cnn-msnbc-are...
| rb808 wrote:
| I can't read the article but does it say what it was before
| covid? I'm not sure if this is a virus related thing or just a
| longer term trend.
| conistonwater wrote:
| Diagnostic criteria for anxiety and depression are very broad
| because they are necessary as _tools_ for practicing doctors
| seeing patients (as opposed to applying them to a random
| selection of people). If you turn the process back, and just ask
| how many people in the population fit under them, you 'll always,
| even in normal times, get an unexpectedly large number. That
| doesn't imply that anything is wrong or that anything needs to be
| done about it, doctors don't use them like that. This is
| approximately the same phenomenon that causes medical students to
| self-diagnose themselves with every disease they learn about: one
| of the fundamental factors missing from such a diagnosis is that
| they haven't walked into a clinic. It's not a bug in the
| diagnostic criteria, it's just a misapplication of them.
|
| One of the main ways of fighting over-diagnosis is to not apply
| diagnostic criteria for every known condition to random people
| who you have no a priori reason to suspect they might have those
| conditions.
| fwip wrote:
| The article shows the rise in people that meet these criteria
| over time, based on the same criteria self-reported in the same
| way.
| cma wrote:
| Aren't somebody the criteria overkill in extenuating
| circumstances? Usually they will have caveats like "not
| immediately after death of a family member", etc.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| > very broad because they are necessary as tools for practicing
| doctors seeing patients
|
| This is such nonsense. These criteria are supposed to be
| scientifically valid and not a tool. What other medical
| speciality calls their diagnostic criteria tools. That's like
| saying the standards for diagnosing cancer are just a tool and
| anyone could be diagnosed with cancer if the doctor thought you
| would benefit from chemo drugs.
|
| Amazing the mental gymnastics people will go to defend an
| obviously corrupt discipline like psychiatry.
| Spivak wrote:
| In a cool future universe where we can introspect the brain
| like we do with code the need for statistics based diagnostic
| criteria might disappear but it's what we've got.
|
| Meeting the criteria is a good sign that you should talk to
| someone about it and figure out if that's the best
| explanation for what's happening. It's not a checklist and
| then "you've got the GAD."
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| > In a cool future universe where we can introspect the
| brain like we do...
|
| We can do that. It's called fMRI.
|
| > It's not a checklist and then "you've got the GAD."
|
| Yes it is. That's literally exactly what is it.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > We can do that. It's called fMRI.
|
| It's clearly not sufficient or not ready yet otherwise it
| would be used as such.
|
| > Yes it is. That's literally exactly what is it.
|
| That's not a fair assessment.
| ssivark wrote:
| This is an important point about the role of priors --
| especially if one is using a statistical (correlation based)
| proxy for what is actually a causal question.
|
| But here's a practical question: imagine a universal healthcare
| mandate which allows people to get a mental health check-up
| every year. What criteria should the doctors use? Would the
| diagnostics have to change significantly?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| What do practitioners do in countries with universal
| healthcare?
| chipperyman573 wrote:
| You still need to actively persue the healthcare even if
| your country pays for it.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I will say the barriers are definitely lower though when
| i compare my home country Australia to my adopted country
| the USA. Sure you need to actively pursue healthcare in
| Australia but the barriers are just so much lower.
|
| A great example is http://www.cancerscreening.gov.au/inte
| rnet/screening/publish... You fill in the details and
| you're mailed a reply post paid bowel cancer screening
| kit.
| dmix wrote:
| In Canada shrinks aren't covered by our public health
| insurance. They are just as expensive as they are in the
| states.
| nca-peripherals wrote:
| Before this incident (I've been through a few disasters and
| violent incidents), I was already on my 13th antidepressant
| (vilazodone) which doesn't appear to be working. Also on
| propranolol, clonidine, atomoxetine, carbamazepine, baclofen,
| gabapentin, and 40 mg/day of CBD. I buy CBD isolate (pure CBD) in
| bulk and make my own sublingual tincture using a precisely-
| measured ratio of ingredients comprising:
|
| - Organic coconut oil
|
| - Vitamin E T50
|
| - Grape seed / citrus extract
|
| - CBD
|
| in a dark glass container filled into sterile saline spray
| bottles for use.
|
| If you don't do this, then you're probably either being cheated
| or don't know what you're taking.
|
| Anyhow, so far this new antidepressant doesn't seem to be working
| so the dose is getting upped. If this doesn't work, it's back to
| mirtazapine and weight gain. The only other options involve
| anticholinergics, extrapyramidal issues, electricity, magnets,
| and/or brain surgery.
|
| I also have gradually, over the past few years, developed some
| sort of neurological decline vaguely reminiscent of vascular,
| frontotemporal, or Lewy body dementia or chronic traumatic
| encephalopathy (I was born cyanotic over several hours because of
| incompetent Kaiser Permanente doctors and was hit in the head
| extremely hard as a teenager twice and didn't receive proper
| medical care).
|
| I can barely speak, I stutter a lot, my memory is disappearing,
| and my level of consciousness and clarity is declining. I can't
| code in any language anymore and I used to work in Rust, Haskell,
| C, Crystal, and so on. My sleep is a mess... one or a few hours
| here and there at all times of the day. I use every bit of
| concentration to write this. If it's an incurable condition, I
| will go somewhere very, very remote in Montana or Wyoming and
| breathe nitrogen.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| It sounds like you're in a bad place. Lots of us have been
| there. Seek help from others, please. There are people around,
| hopefully in your local area, who can help.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Sounds like they are and have been.
| munificent wrote:
| I recently read "Man's Search for Meaning", written by a
| psychologist who survived several years in concentration camps
| during the Holocaust.
|
| Frankl's main thesis is that humans have a deep need for
| _meaning_ in their life, which he defines as producing some kind
| of work, caring for others, or having enriching experiences. This
| strongly resonates with me. I believe America 's consumer culture
| undermines this need. Many work "bullshit jobs" only to be able
| to afford to consume things -- the work itself is not _for_
| anything more meaningful than a paycheck. Mass manufacturing lets
| us care of most of our material needs ourselves so there is less
| culture around caring for each other than there used to be. There
| are an infinite number of "experiences" available, but most are
| simply consuming a thing created by someone else and endlessly
| reproduced. There is nothing particularly enriching about
| watching the latest Hollywood spectacle, nearly instiguishable
| from the previous ten movies in the franchise.
|
| Frankl observed about his fellow prisoners that people could
| survive anything if they had something to live _for_. But when
| our lives are meaningless and we fill that void with shallow
| pleasures and distractions, we are ill-equipped to have the
| resilience needed to get through something like the current
| pandemic. When something bad enough is going on that Netflix no
| longer takes your mind off it, then to what do you turn?
| caleb-allen wrote:
| It seems that American culture and/or economics have, in recent
| decades, moved toward primarily consumption rather than
| primarily production. My point of view is that the backlash and
| anger against capitalism I perceive from younger generations is
| a result of how unfulfilling consumerism really is.
|
| I think individualism and personal liberty has been conflated
| with a selfish sort of consumerism, from the end consumer up
| through corporate cultures. Want something new? Buy it! Are you
| a business wanting to make inroads in a new sector? Don't
| research and produce. Acquire!
|
| It is no surprise to me, then, that corporate debt is at an all
| time high, corporations and individuals are less prepared and
| resilient than ever, and that this crisis is violently exposing
| that.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I think individualism and personal liberty has been
| conflated with a selfish sort of consumerism_
|
| Yes. It's important to note, too, that this isn't something
| American people spontaneously decided to do. It was a
| deliberate strategy by rich business owners to _sell_ the
| country on the idea of consumerism being great (because it
| was great for their businesses).
| crocodiletears wrote:
| The nation's been psychologically wrong-footed during an election
| year where the incumbent is the most controversial president in
| decades (one who's been impeached, even), the challenging party's
| primary process has been subjected to accusations of corruption
| and favoritism (at best) by the presumed nominee's opposition,
| and been riddled with suspicious errors. That alone would be a
| memorable storm and a half for our political history, but it
| coincides with a sweeping collapse in institutional trust,
| economic hardship, concerns of government overreach, and fear of
| mortal peril.
|
| And we're just inaugurating the decade.
| samdamsamm wrote:
| America has a profound ability to diagnose individual problems,
| and an active inability to diagnose social problems.
|
| The American psychological industry cannot be let off the hook.
| DSM-5 is a handbook for how to blame society's failures on
| individuals. We need scientific doctors capable of considering
| not only the realities they are allowed to accept but also the
| realities of the actually existing world in which their
| patients live.
|
| We desperately need legitimate mental health institutions, but
| for-profit healthcare and for-profit education cannot provide
| that.
| curryst wrote:
| > DSM-5 is a handbook for how to blame society's failures on
| individuals
|
| I staunchly disagree with this, this has never been my
| experience with any of the psychologists/psychiatrists I have
| seen (I've seen somewhere around 6 over the course of my
| life).
|
| Blame has never been a component of any psychiatric treatment
| I have experienced. The DSM is a book of diagnostic criteria
| to identify the issues you are experiencing, to help guide
| the provider in finding an appropriate means to help the
| patient cope with their problems. There is no question of
| blame; blame is basically irrelevant to the treatment.
|
| I also don't think identifying someone's problem as being a
| result of society is clinically productive. Is telling a
| depressed person "Listen, you're just getting screwed over by
| society" going to be helpful? I think not, because the
| corollary to that is "and you can't change society, so you're
| stuck like this".
|
| I do think it is important to consider how society is
| impacting the mental health of all of its members, but I
| don't think that discussion belongs inside your doctor's
| office.
| JacksonGariety wrote:
| > "and you can't change society, so you're stuck like this"
|
| I think OP meant that psychologists/psychiatrists don't
| recognize the social nature of mental illness at all. Just
| because you can't change society doesn't mean you should
| tell patients that they can lift themselves out of
| depression through sheer willpower, healthy eating habits,
| and exercise. Those things can help but if you don't know
| how you're going to pay rent next month and you've got two
| kids, you're going to have serious anxiety.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| The dsm5 is a billing manual. Psychology is still a juvenile
| practice rife with the problems of a juvenile industry. Fact
| is, psychology can't do much to make people happier if their
| life isn't great to begin with.
|
| theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/19/bad-news-is-were-
| dying-earlier-in-britain-down-to-shit-life-syndrome
|
| The solution is not legitimate metal health institutions,
| there are many great ones. They are merely powerless to meet
| their goals when their patients lives are the problem.
| Instead we need to put the people of this country first. This
| needs to be enshrined in law and people must be provided a
| bare minimum to allow them to thrive. Forced poverty to
| benefit shareholders has had ruinous effects of the people
| wherever it's been attempted.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I think you mean the American psychiatric industry, rather
| than psychological industry.
|
| DSM is produced by both, but the over-medication of America
| is 100% driven by the psychiatrists (as they can actually
| prescribe drugs).
| Tenoke wrote:
| >The American psychological industry cannot be let off the
| hook. DSM-5 is a handbook for how to blame society's failures
| on individuals.
|
| Ironically, you are blaming the DSM the same way you seem to
| think the DSM 'blames' individuals.
| pjc50 wrote:
| And there's a global pandemic on and people are stuck inside.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Wait, that too? Woof. Not great.
| idoby wrote:
| With psych stuff, I can't help but wonder how much of it is
| shooting the arrows and then placing the target...
| courtf wrote:
| I believe the existential crisis so many are experiencing has
| been caused by the pandemic, but perhaps not in the way one might
| expect when approaching the problem rationally. Yes, we are more
| isolated, and perhaps concerned for the safety of ourselves or
| our loved ones, or even for some abstract concept of community or
| society, but depression is characterized by anhedonia: the
| inability to feel pleasure. Are we all sitting around, so
| preoccupied by the crises of the day that we have become numb top
| pleasure? That doesn't describe depression, although perhaps
| anxiety. I would describe depression as the loss of most strong
| feelings, not only pleasurable ones, and that is why death
| becomes so alluring: fear of death has been numbed as well.
|
| No, an existential crisis is rooted in the meaning, or lack
| thereof, we are able to ascribe to our lives. And the pandemic
| has in many ways restricted our connections to those sources of
| meaning. Whatever stories we were telling ourselves about our
| life's purpose, the plotlines we imagined for ourselves, have
| been disrupted. The student has had their university all but
| taken from them. They cannot experience it in quite the same
| tangible way as they once did. The same is true for the worker
| who derives his meaning from labor. For many, that connection has
| been damaged, if not severed. But, I must stress, it is not a
| perceived loss that drives us to depression. We are not in
| mourning, we are bereft of such powerful emotions. It is he loss
| of meaning that accompanies the dawning realization that our
| sources of meaning were nothing more than illusions to begin
| with.
|
| We realize now that life goes on without these guiding
| influences; that the rituals we perform do not in fact earn us
| the favor of the Gods. We come upon the idea that perhaps life
| really is meaningless and that we were in fact only existing
| previously because of a foolish, irrational faith. It has been
| thrust upon us, entirely by happenstance (and not because of any
| rational deduction or brilliance on our parts), that we are
| fools, rubbing our prayer beads and voluntarily deluding
| ourselves into thinking that some bit of our finite, meaningless
| lives could somehow persist alongside the infinite.
|
| "For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite,
| or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will
| connect the finite with the infinite."
| Exmoor wrote:
| >"What's worrying is the effect this situation is clearly having
| on young adults."
|
| I wonder if this is a perverse side effect of normalcy bias [0]?
| For me, a person in middle age, I can look back at my life and
| see a lifetime of fairly stable history with only a few traumatic
| events (9/11, 2008 crash). If you're 22, the current
| circumstances make up a much larger portion of your life.
|
| >The toll has also hit the poor much harder, according to the
| Census Bureau data -- throwing into even sharper relief mental
| health disparities that have long existed.
|
| This seems completely, and sadly, reasonable. You probably
| couldn't design a situation in a lab that would screw over the
| poor more than COVID-19.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
| malandrew wrote:
| I would also add that the main stream media and social media
| don't help. Everywhere you turn, you're being conditioned to be
| in fear and social media amplifies that negative message.
| username90 wrote:
| A young person is building their life, lockdown is preventing
| them from doing that. For example a person looking to build a
| family will miss out on a few months they could find a partner,
| and the fertility clock is ticking
| rumanator wrote:
| > A young person is building their life, lockdown is
| preventing them from doing that.
|
| I find this comment utterly mind boggling. The US's stay at
| home orders were issued when? Mid to end of March? That makes
| it what? About 1 month? Are we supposed to believe that
| "young people" suddenly get into a tail spin because they
| have to endure a whole month of not finding a partner, get to
| know each other, make life plans, and get pregnant?
| aianus wrote:
| > Are we supposed to believe that "young people" suddenly
| get into a tail spin because they have to endure a whole
| month
|
| They've already basically cancelled college in Canada for
| September through December. All large classes (so all
| freshman core classes) will be online and it's doubtful
| dorms will be open. So that's at least 9 months ruined for
| high school seniors and college students.
| kenneth wrote:
| 14-20% unemployment in the matter of months is normal,
| then?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >The US's stay at home orders were issued when? Mid to end
| of March? That makes it what? About 1 month?
|
| My state issued the stay-at-home advisory around March 15,
| and lifted it with precautions May 19. That's two months.
| closeparen wrote:
| Dating is close contact with people from outside your
| household. Sometimes several in quick succession. I don't
| see that becoming safe or legal before full vaccination.
| The science-fiction timeline for full vaccination is two
| years. And I hope we in this industry know better than to
| take the "not physically impossible" timeline on an
| ambitious technical project as a commitment.
|
| It's possible there will be some kind of compromise
| involving a longer phone/video-only period, earlier
| exclusivity, and public policy acceptance of having contact
| with a small number of people from outside the household.
| At least I can hope. But nevertheless, this is a uniquely
| awful time in history to be single.
| capsulecorp wrote:
| Shutdown happened mid March, it's been over 2 months.
| nmfisher wrote:
| > I find this comment utterly mind boggling. The US's stay
| at home orders were issued when? Mid to end of March? That
| makes it what? About 1 month? Are we supposed to believe
| that "young people" suddenly get into a tail spin because
| they have to endure a whole month of not finding a partner,
| get to know each other, make life plans, and get pregnant?
|
| No, but millions have lost their jobs due to the shutdown,
| and it's very conceivable that many would put off
| children/marriage/partnership because of that.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I know that the whole "have kids" thing, which we were
| thinking about, has basically been totally shut down.
| Nope, this is craziness, time to just survive for the
| next few years.
| karatestomp wrote:
| On the plus side, if you catch a bad case of Covid then a
| birth this year will probably work out as free because
| you'll be hitting your out-of-pocket max anyway. Just
| make sure you time it so the birth doesn't hit on the
| next year or they'll get you for double.
|
| (yes, for international folks, people in the US who've
| thought it through _really do_ base their family planning
| in large part on when their annual insurance limits
| reset, because the difference in costs can be _thousands_
| of dollars even with pretty good insurance, if you
| accidentally land most of the prenatal care on one year
| and the birth itself on the next)
| username90 wrote:
| It doesn't just put family building on ice, it puts almost
| everything on ice. Everyone who hasn't already built a life
| they are reasonable happy with will be feeling horrible
| right now, and most young people are in that stage. I'm
| already above that age so Corona doesn't affect me much,
| but I know that if I were younger I'd hate it.
| tayo42 wrote:
| All of that plus the unknown end of it. Sure its been 2
| or 3 months but its not like its ending tomorrow. Any one
| who wanted to make a major life change in the next two
| years is probably rethinking it.
| ck425 wrote:
| This is an issue I've had. I've been reconsidering and
| exploring career options over the last year. Atm I can't
| act on anything but I've all the time in the world to
| dwell on it. It's incredible frustrating and causing me a
| lot of anxiety. And I'm one of the lucky ones with a
| secure job that's not terrible. I can't imagine how rough
| it is for others.
| avbanks wrote:
| This is a very eloquent way of describing my exact
| feelings toward this situation.
| closeparen wrote:
| Well said. And decisions are going to be made almost
| exclusively by people who _do_ already have homes and
| families they are happy with.
| argonaut wrote:
| I find your comment to be even more mind boggling - I'm not
| exaggerating. The shutdown has been short but it has
| completely wrecked with education and entry-level jobs,
| which define a young person's development.
|
| 1) Anyone in school has had their education upended.
| Schools will be closed March through June. That is 3 months
| of a child or teen's educational/social/psychological
| development. I'm not even talking about college (which you
| can argue can muddle along with distance education), or
| summer activities (which you can argue are optional), but
| those have been impacted too.
|
| 2) For those in college, I would guess the majority have
| lost internships. Many new grads have lost their jobs. Most
| new grads probably didn't even get a job by March, and now
| they likely won't get a job until the end of the year or
| next year. For the majority of people who _don 't_ go to
| college, many work in service jobs and have been wiped out.
| malandrew wrote:
| > it has completely wrecked with education and entry-
| level jobs
|
| Humans have recovered and prospered from far more dire
| circumstances, including many immigrants to the US and
| Europe.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You're not wrong, but I suspect that there's a widespread
| Whig view of history that's been present in the Western
| world since the end of WWII.
|
| You think of the '90s and the prosperity there, the end
| of major international rivalries, the birth of the
| Information Age, and imagine that time will just go on
| forever. Each generation is supposed to live better lives
| than the previous generation, right? _We have the
| technology!_
|
| And yet the past couple of decades showed that no, income
| inequality and rising costs of living and the
| impossibility of buying housing in many markets have
| basically depressed American (and many other Western)
| youth, sort of like what's been happening in Japan all
| this time.
|
| The hardscrabble Ellis Island immigrants were fleeing
| from clearly traumatic problems. Famine, war, disease.
| What afflicts modern day youth? High prices, bad numbers.
| It's an abstract foe with no clear solutions. It's not as
| if they can just move to Australia or New Zealand,
| another frontier of economic opportunity to start anew.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's not that it's been two months, it's that it's been two
| months and no plan for the future. If I knew, ahead of
| time, that I'd be able to meet people again in another
| month? Sure, that's 3 months, that's no problem. It's the
| indefinite suspension of all activities! It's the suspected
| lockdown! It's not even the laws - people are _scared_ , if
| you don't already have a long-term partner you're probably
| not going to go meet someone new! You can't even make plans
| for "after", because it's unclear when exactly "after" is.
| This is a huge roadblock to _any_ sort of planning, much
| less a romantic relationship.
| viklove wrote:
| My SO was supposed to start med school this fall, and now
| that's all up in the air. Try to empathize -- yes, the
| lockdown has only been in effect for a few months, but this
| pandemic is going to continue for at least a year or two.
| I'm planning on taking the GMAT in prep for business school
| next year, and even that is questionable at this point.
|
| When you're in your mid 20s, delaying 6 months to 1 year of
| your career trajectory can have massive effects. If you
| already have your life established, you probably don't have
| the same concerns.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Arguably the fertility clock is ticking harder for those who
| in their late thirties just realized perhaps it's ok to stop
| waiting for full employment stability before starting to
| consider a family.
| aszantu wrote:
| fertility clock was made up by fertility clinics, they say
| it's declining sharply, doubeling the rate at which bad
| things can happen to the child if u get it in ur 50ies, but
| it's going from 0,1 to 0,3 or so, it's really low if
| someone's healthy in her fifties and still has eggs left
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm just entering my late 30's, and this made my decision
| for me - I didn't feel good about my resources the last few
| years and now this? It just got A LOT harder to see myself
| having kids - at this rate the clock is going to run out
| before I feel good.
| pjc50 wrote:
| On the other hand, if you don't do that and end up
| unemployed, an entire faction will be out to condemn you
| for having a child you can't support.
| username90 wrote:
| A large majority of people in their late thirties have
| already established a family, they wont show up in
| statistics.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Wow. I just checked the average age of motherhood in the
| USA and it's 26yo. That's 6 years less than in the
| country I'm living; perhaps my intuitions about what it's
| normal in a modern society are heavily skewed (and in my
| social circles it's even worse, with age if motherhood
| around 35yo, largely due to effects caused precarious
| work)
| tayo42 wrote:
| Quick google search says that not true its a bit higher
| for the us.
|
| Its also bimodal
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-
| bir...
|
| Edit: I actually think i confused my self with the age of
| first birth and age of parents, ignore that first line
| jobigoud wrote:
| The grand parent comment probably made the same mistake
| because there isn't any country where the mean mother age
| at first birth is 32 or 33, that is, 6 years more than US
| 26.3 or 26.9 (depending on sources).
| ithkuil wrote:
| Yes, indeed I took the average age of the mother of any
| birth and not the average age for the birth of the First
| child.
|
| Official Italian ISTAT report for claims 31.1 for mother
| age at first birth. Still significantly higher than US
| fwiw.
| third_I wrote:
| I'm gonna speak purely anecdotally, and this is personal
| opinion.
|
| I was born in 82 in France, was _19_ on 9 /11/2001.
|
| It definitely shaped my psyche and world view. You just don't
| grow up as naively when you know 9/11 is an option (the end
| result, however we got there).
|
| I realized last Sept (19) as I visited the Memorial in NYC for
| the first time that this had had a long, lasting effect on me.
| I sobbed in the room where you listen to a flight attendant's
| last call to her husband. Upon exit I saluted the security
| guard with deep gratitude. We exchanged a timid smile from the
| eyes. It felt right.
|
| The shitshow that occurred in the US in the years following
| 9/11 (Patriot Act, Iraq conspiracy to bring in my country to
| war, Obama spying on Merkel and Hollande and condoning PRISM,
| etc) made me realize, with profound disappointment, how
| idealistic and naive I had been about the USA, as if their
| recent suffering made them somehow impervious to be becoming
| hostile. I now realize how ridiculous my optimism had been, and
| the truth is I have countless examples right here at home in
| history and reality.
|
| The fact is we get over something like 9/11, we move on, but
| sometimes we're reminded that this shaped us deeply.
|
| I believe COVID will have bigger and more lasting effects on
| youth, it's just so much bigger and longer. I hope it will help
| produce the bigger kind of changes that make history move
| forward.
|
| > You probably couldn't design a situation in a lab that would
| screw over the poor more than COVID-19.
|
| This is very true in the US and most countries around the
| world. If I were poor and I could choose _where_ , I'd
| certainly prefer to be poor in Western Europe where at least
| it's not a death sentence thanks to free healthcare and a
| minimum socio-economic net (it's not perfect, far from it, but
| if I had to choose... better than the USA certainly under
| COVID, and that would probably remain true whoever the
| president is given the lasting social security structure).
|
| I feel grateful, in a way, that we're taking care of poor
| people. I know many rich entrepreneurs today in Europe who, at
| some point in their life, were poor AF and may have died if it
| weren't for all the social nets, they might have never become
| who they are today. Some of them employ 100+ people, others
| have contributed massively to funding education (lifelong
| notably, for adults too).
|
| This tangent to say: it's worse for the poor and probably
| always will be, but that's also how some eventually create
| value beyond mere wealth. The "trick" is to avoid death,
| whether social or clinical, when people are drowning. In that
| regard, most rich countries do worse today than 50 years ago
| (chances for children to do a better job than their parents),
| and that's deeply, deeply worrying because it's the very fuel
| of our current wealth and domination over existence (how modern
| civilizations are so much better at surviving, at thriving,
| thanks to science, tech, political stability, etc.)
|
| Food for thought, and room for improvement, which I'm sure
| those most shocked by COVID will have no choice but to care
| about. They will have seen the fall, so they are uniquely
| qualified to build the next new rise.
|
| Edit: math...
| viklove wrote:
| > I was born in 82 in France, was 21 on 9/11/2001
|
| Do they count years differently in France?
| third_I wrote:
| Yes, I was in fact 19. Oh my :) Edited.
| adamsea wrote:
| More than anything it's a perverse side effect of catastrophe.
| ;).
| [deleted]
| freeone3000 wrote:
| 9/11 happened to me in grade school. Iraq war happened
| thereafter. Then the financial crash. Then the subprime crash.
| And now covid. My life is shaped MORE by crises than by
| stability - not just the current one, but ALL of them.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That is interesting, but if you shift ten years back from
| there, the kids from that time went through:
|
| * Operation Desert Storm
|
| * The early 1990s post-war recession, and its jobless
| recovery
|
| * The Asian and Russian recessions (and the LTCM collapse)
| and knock-on effects
|
| Go back 10 years from that and you have:
|
| * Early 1980s recession
|
| * Black Monday
| rubidium wrote:
| Yea, so turns out being a human in a peaceful stable society
| is pretty rare. Most of humanity has had much more severe
| crisis than what you experienced. We're a remarkably
| resilient species.
| coliveira wrote:
| Yes, the US looks increasingly more like a 3rd world country.
| One crisis after another.
| war1025 wrote:
| Europe was an even worse place crisis-wise for the majority
| of the 20th century.
|
| The sad thing about humanity is our living memory only goes
| back fifty years or so. Everything past that is just "back
| in the old days" and we forget how extremely recently all
| those things were even on a human timescale.
| coliveira wrote:
| The US had its share of bad times in the 20th century
| too, including the largest depression ever, but at least
| it invested in economic development. Currently, the goal
| seams to be reducing all social investment and let the
| financial industry take control of everything.
| geggam wrote:
| Yet every crisis the 1% seem to make more... very
| opportunistic of them to leverage our society and not give
| back
| paulddraper wrote:
| That plays a role, but I'd guess that overall stability
| (financial, career, friendships) may play an even larger role.
| pengaru wrote:
| > This seems completely, and sadly, reasonable. You probably
| couldn't design a situation in a lab that would screw over the
| poor more than COVID-19.
|
| I'm in a very low-income rural community. With most the folks
| living off food stamps already, their lives were relatively
| unaffected by COVID-19, it's not like they were working much
| anyways.
|
| If you wanted to maximally screw over the poor, you'd first get
| them all sitting pretty long enough to start making families
| while riding on a social system like food stamps, then yank it
| out from under them. This is something the current
| administration has been both working on and threatening, and
| that creates significantly more anxiety from what I've
| observed.
| asdff wrote:
| This is a stressful stage of life for a lot of people. The
| quarter life crisis is very real. Young people tend to have
| young kids, or roommates, or tiny apartments, and working from
| home is a larger strain, especially at the entry/junior level
| which is a stressful rat race in many fields. Plus you don't
| have much wealth built up if you do get laid off, and little
| experience on your resume to justify being rehired quickly.
| ck425 wrote:
| Even if you don't have those living alone is a different but
| also difficult situation.
| malandrew wrote:
| When in human history has life for most not been stressful?
| If anything life for most today (even the young with kids,
| roommates or tiny apartments) is far less stressful than for
| most humans in history. There's a complete loss of
| perspective today.
| courtf wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure, history is an awful long time and we
| don't have great records for most of it.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| Stress is not just a matter of the facts of every day life.
| That's almost like saying all that matters is if you can
| eat and sleep. That is not what most people want out of
| life. They want meaning in their life, respect, and love.
| Those are all things that are way way way more difficult to
| get today than at almost any time during human history.
| watwut wrote:
| I really don't think so. The people in the past were not
| getting automatic respect and were not getting automatic
| love. The marriage was often economic transaction and you
| often had to live among people who did not respected you.
| The marriage happened after short time of knowing each
| other and if it turned out mistake, that was it forever,
| no love.
|
| Some people's lives had meaning, plenty of others were
| basically surviving in routine .
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Personal contact is super important to people. Physical
| closeness is important. Being able to meet people in
| person is important for personal relationships. This
| stuff matters, and it's very hard to get right now.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| >The marriage happened after short time of knowing each
| other and if it turned out mistake, that was it forever,
| no love.
|
| This makes it sound like you believe love is a bool that
| gets set at the beginning of the relationship, but from
| what I understand love is a float that the couple can
| work to increase.
| watwut wrote:
| No, love don't have to die. But, initial passion, is not
| love. And people are much different in the first period
| when they are trying to make best impression and later on
| after months. In extreme case, many abusers (of both
| genders) show themselves only after months.
|
| For long term love, it matters greatly whether you two
| are match by personality and values. And short term
| engagement make it easy to select wrong partner.
| courtf wrote:
| We don't really know this with such certainty. Our
| records have gaps and only extend a few thousand years
| back, at most. Even then, we often only have bits and
| pieces for certain populations. It's a large stretch to
| generalize over human history.
| all2 wrote:
| > Stress is not just a matter of the facts of every day
| life.
|
| Stress is the _response_ to every day life. We don 't
| have the coping skills we used to have.
|
| Kids, children, were conscripted, given weapons, and sent
| to a different continent to fight and die. Twice. After
| the first time, the Spanish Flu hit and killed millions
| of people. The kids who lived through that time were
| mentally tough and capable of coping with the tragedy of
| both events.
|
| They lived full lives, had purpose, had families. By and
| large, they had a few things that today's kids don't;
| religion and nuclear families. To some extent, God _is_ a
| panacea. Having certainty of one 's final destination
| makes the road there a lot more manageable. They also had
| nuclear families and all the benefits that go with them.
|
| We are now at the tail end of a "softening". Peace makes
| for soft people.
| tdfx wrote:
| > They also had nuclear families and all the benefits
| that go with them.
|
| There's a competing line of thought that considers the
| nuclear family to be one of the worst things that's
| happened to our society. It's created isolated household
| units, disconnected truly multigenerational households,
| and created distance and lack of necessity for extended
| family. By reducing the amount of direct family
| connections you can rely on for support, it's caused a
| massive increase in people depending on the government or
| charity for their emergency needs and arguably further
| exacerbated the loneliness epidemic.
| malandrew wrote:
| I think you're misreading what the OP is saying and you
| two are actually in alignment. They are not saying the
| nuclear family is an improvement on the multigenerational
| household. They are saying that the nuclear family is
| better than what we have today with divorces and single
| parent homes becoming increasingly common.
|
| The degeneracy is from multigenerational to nuclear and
| from nuclear to less than nuclear families. Many people
| who are marxists typically celebrate the demise of both
| multigenerational homes and nuclear families because the
| family unit was seen as an opponent of socialist goals.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Given that WW1 coined the term "Shell Shock", I think
| you're making heroic caricatures out of real people.
|
| If anything the "softening" is that we can now speak of
| these things, rather than force them down under stoic
| veneers and alcoholism.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48528841
| Grimm1 wrote:
| What world do you even live in?
|
| The US has had constant military engagements for the last
| 20-30 years, the largest terrorist attack on US soil, the
| complete economic erosion of the middle class followed by
| the largest recession since the great depression and now
| the largest depression since the great depression with
| the largest pandemic since 1918 where we're also on track
| for millions dying. This is one of the roughest times in
| history to be growing up in compared to those times.
|
| Then there is their idea of "effective coping". It was to
| drink more and smack their wives. Your romanticization of
| those people is utterly off the mark.
| all2 wrote:
| > It was to drink more and smack their wives.
|
| That is also a caricature. I think the middle ground
| between what you have said and I what I have said is more
| likely to be true.
|
| > Your romanticization of those people is utterly off the
| mark.
|
| Noted. In retrospect, I agree.
| psweber wrote:
| I'm not gonna disagree, but I think the difference now is
| an extreme focus on the self and an impossible expectation
| to feel happy and content.
| Havoc wrote:
| I find the direct linkage to corona to be a little misleading. My
| gut feeling says this is a broader sign of the times:
|
| * Rising youth unemployment
|
| * Gig economy & the uncertainty that comes with it
|
| * Crushing study debt
|
| * Little hope of owning property
|
| * Rapidly increasing inequality
|
| * Offshoring & automation
|
| * Healthcare system where serious sickness can lead to financial
| ruin
|
| * Debt fueled systems (or credit score if you prefer - a system
| that kicks people when they're down)
|
| I'd venture that the sane response is anxiety or depression. But
| yeah sure go ahead and blame it on the immediate trigger - COVID
| danans wrote:
| It could be both: Everything you listed has been turning the
| screws into people for a while, but this event has pushed
| people with those pre-existing anxieties over the top to
| needing clinical intervention.
|
| It's similar to how the economy had a number of fragilities
| prior to COVID19 - actually, in a sense they are the same,
| given that people _are_ the economy.
| tathougies wrote:
| Well, duh, the expected prevalence of any disease diagnosed
| entirely by the fiat of a group of people enriched by the disease
| being more prevalent is pretty close to 100%.
|
| In other words, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
|
| This is not to deny the reality of depression and anxiety but to
| cast doubt on the diagnostic criteria purveyed by a special
| interest group whose members get richer and more respected the
| more they can convince the world that the thing they do is
| needed. All professions justify their own existence.
| presiozo wrote:
| I wonder what's the correlation between this and people being
| underpaid. I'm fortunate enough to have my own house after
| graduation so I don't have to pay rent. But I have friends that
| don't have this luxury and man, they are struggling. Besides
| eating and rent they can't afford anything else in a month. No
| question here what's giving them these feelings
| [deleted]
| virvar wrote:
| I live in Denmark, where we lift a lot of the burden of
| civilisation together, to give everyone access to education,
| health/elderly/child care as well as a solid security system
| for those who get unemployed.
|
| And here society is hard enough these days, pressing more and
| more people beyond their limits. I really wonder how you all do
| it in America.
| malandrew wrote:
| > And here society is hard enough these days, pressing more
| and more people beyond their limits. I really wonder how you
| all do it in America.
|
| It's all relative. Someone in the US is looking at failed
| states in Central America and Africa and thinking the same
| thing. One day, people will look at Denmark and think the
| same.
|
| Objectively people may be having a better or worse time in
| different places at different times, but how you personally
| feel about your situation is all relative at the end of the
| day.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The United States and Denmark are very different countries.
|
| The U.S. has nearly 4x as fast population growth, 2x as many
| immigrants, 10x the incarceration rate, much greater
| religious and racial diversity, 100x more billionaires, 17%
| less GDP per capita, and 3x as much debt/GDP.
|
| I'll refrain from opining as to what is cause and what is
| effect, but the differences are many.
| adventured wrote:
| > 17% less GDP per capita
|
| US GDP per capita was 9% higher than Denmark for 2019.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nom
| i...
|
| > 3x as much debt/GDP
|
| Denmark has a dramatically greater household debt to income
| ratio than the US, and is one of the most indebted
| countries in the world. They're in horrible debt shape.
| Their household debt as a percentage of disposable income
| is 282%, the worst in the world; that contrasts with 105%
| for the US, which is only slightly worse than Germany at
| 95%. Denmark's quality of life is coming at the expense of
| the future, as they load up massively on debt today to fake
| their standard of living.
|
| Take a look:
|
| https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm
| mydongle wrote:
| >Denmark's quality of life is coming at the expense of
| the future, as they load up massively on debt today to
| fake their standard of living.
|
| It's probably worth it in the end. How much longer do we
| have to endure low quality of life for the sake of some
| future? Let's say you endured and now your son becomes an
| adult. Is that now the time to start improving things and
| enjoying a better quality of life? Probably not, people
| will say it isn't time yet and we aren't ready, therefore
| your son will have to sacrifice his happiness and
| wellbeing too, for his children.
|
| The average person in Denmark will probably die of
| natural cause, after a relatively happy and fulfilling
| life. Doesn't seem like they're getting any worse either
| for it.
|
| What do we have to show for our sacrifices? Nothing it
| seems. The powers that be will cry about muh inflation
| all day and won't bail out people, but they're ready to
| bend over and print money if the corporations and ultra
| rich need it though.
| paulddraper wrote:
| My mistake on GDP number.
|
| And I should have clarified that was national
| (government) debt.
|
| Thanks for the perspective.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >And here society is hard enough these days, pressing more
| and more people beyond their limits. I really wonder how you
| all do it in America.
|
| Oh, that's simple: those of us who survive the rat race are
| insane, and those who don't, you don't hear from.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| A lot of Americans think they can make it themselves without
| help from others. Smart people don't believe that and make
| the government subsidize their stuff left and right. Often
| while deluding themselves into thinking that they are "self
| made". And then you have the people who constantly vote
| against their own interests while enduring the hardships the
| system imposes.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| We're particularly nuts if you want the short answer.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Exceptionalism.
| mdszy wrote:
| That's what they don't tell you - a whole lot of people
| straight up DON'T do it.
|
| A whole lot of people are homeless.
|
| Many people never go to the doctor because they can't afford
| it.
| luckylion wrote:
| I don't know whether there's a large correlation, but I believe
| it would mostly be in the severity of outcomes. Depression
| isn't "because life is hard", but life being hard makes dealing
| with depression harder than life being easy.
|
| I know people who are very wealthy who struggle with
| depression, I know people who are very wealthy who don't even
| really understand the term because they've never experienced
| anything remotely close. And I know both types who are not
| wealthy at all. From my personal experience, money doesn't
| matter in that regard. But it's definitely better to struggle
| with depression without the added stress of keeping up with the
| bills, and when you've gotten through it, you're having a good
| life if you've been rich before, and you're going to have to
| pick up the pieces and try to glue them back together if you
| haven't.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| On top of that, I wonder how much these statistics are
| influenced by the ridiculous student debt burdens the U.S.
| education system saddles their youth with. Getting a master's
| degree will easily have you graduating with six figures in
| student loan debt. In a sibling comment I see a mention of
| Denmark - a country where not only is higher education free,
| the government actually pays students a monthly stipend to help
| cover basic living expenses.
|
| The U.S. is an extremely backwards country when it comes to
| taking care of its people, with city streets literally lined up
| with tents of homeless people in some of its biggest cities. No
| universal healthcare, low social mobility, it's not the least
| bit surprising to me that a third of the country is depressed.
| It's just sad that our government does nothing about it while
| our president is busy tweeting conspiracy theories.
| refurb wrote:
| Yup, America is in shambles. That's why everyone gets so
| pissed when they try to stop the millions of people that want
| to come here.
| logicslave wrote:
| I'm telling you, the elite of this country in the 90s and the
| early 2000s sold this whole country up the creek. Both sides of
| the political spectrum pushed ultra capitalist policies and broke
| the common fabric of America. All meaningful blue collar work was
| outsourced, large swaths of intelligent highly competitive
| workers insourced from other countries, artificial boosting of
| financial assets, etc. The old America is rotting, the new
| America we see is bright and shiny. This will take a long time to
| fully surface, 50 years maybe, but it will eventually.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Not just America, but all nations have decided that let's gut
| out the local manufacturing of goods, allow complete
| exploitation of labor in one country and then reap the
| benefits. Now there is only one place that knows how to make
| stuff. Executives benefited tremendously at the expense of
| their homeplace. This way the entire fabric of the country
| tears apart and gets so tangled that voices of reason, science,
| truth and liberty gets drowned and no one knows what to believe
| anymore. The state of democracy is in danger. From top-bottom
| to left-right, the entire nation is dividing and these troughs
| will not be easily coalesced. Don't worry, services are
| starting to go to this centralized authoritarian regime too,
| not just physical goods.
| luckylion wrote:
| > The state of democracy is in danger. From top-bottom to
| left-right, the entire nation is dividing and these troughs
| will not be easily coalesced.
|
| Divide et impera. But it doesn't even have to be a conspiracy
| and "class warfare", it seems that "enemy action" is hard to
| tell apart from "we've just let things happen and this is
| what happened".
| karatestomp wrote:
| Shit, our terrible healthcare system's given me what'd probably
| qualify as clinical anxiety for longish periods _several_ times
| in the last few years, and that 's despite being well into the
| top 20% most economically-fortunate Americans, _consistently
| having health insurance_ , and not having _really_ serious or
| chronic medical problems in my immediate family.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Same here. I am totally terrified of being in an accident or
| having a serious disease and then getting wiped out financially
| as I have seen others in similar situations. If you are lucky
| things usually work out but it can easily happen that you are
| liable for a $60000 helicopter ride or a $300000 hospital bill
| because somebody (not even you) has filled out some paperwork
| incorrectly.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Probably correlates very closely with the increase in hysterical
| media and news reporting.
| orwin wrote:
| Either you're overestimating how most people consume news
| media, or i'm underestimating it.
|
| Unless you think the fact that journalists are more often
| depressed and/or anxious make their reporting more
| "hysterical". In this case you might be onto something.
| dntbnmpls wrote:
| Kinda like "A third of Americans now show signs of clinical
| anxiety or depression".
| ReticentVole wrote:
| The 'cure' of endless and pointless lockdowns is indeed proving
| worse than the disease, particularly when the CDC estimates
| overall mortality from the virus will be only 0.4%:
|
| https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cd...
|
| For reference the seasonal flu is 0.2%, for which we do...
| precisely nothing.
| marcell wrote:
| I'm confused by the downvotes on this. The comment is quoting
| CDC numbers, this is not some fake news report.
|
| The 0.4% mortality for coronavirus is the CDC best estimate.
|
| The 0.2% is from the CDC website for the 2017 flu season.
|
| Edit: The parent comment has apparently been flag removed. But
| it was claiming that the reaction to coronavirus (lockdown) is
| worse than the damage from the virus, and used the above
| comparison to flu mortality to support this claim.
|
| I'm not sure why this comment was flag removed, since it used
| data to support a position.
| username90 wrote:
| People made the issue political in USA. So instead of
| thinking rationally and discussing facts people just vote
| along the party lines. Downplaying the disease makes them
| think that you are right wing and hence should be down-voted.
| nunodonato wrote:
| it just shows how brainwashed people are, even here on HN.
| Bogeyman corona is coming to eat you all!! Disregard facts,
| turn on the tv and continue to spit out fear.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I'll bite.
|
| That percentage represents a million people in the US. It
| also doesn't represent the number of people who may
| experience shortened lifespans due to damage to their lungs
| or other organs.
|
| Also, the comment suggests that we do nothing for the flu,
| which is patently false. We organize massive vaccination
| efforts every year to combat the flu, we have readily
| available tests, and we have a well understood model for how
| it spreads and how to treat it (including antivirals if
| caught early.)
|
| Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith
| along political lines rather than deeply examining the issue.
| username90 wrote:
| > Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith
| along political lines rather than deeply examining the
| issue.
|
| No it isn't. Before vaccine a normal flu season killed 0.1%
| of the population in a year. Not 0.1% of infected, 0.1% of
| everyone. Those kinds of numbers are not good, but they are
| not a catastrophe either, especially if it is just a single
| year. And to me it looks like Corona is roughly that
| dangerous, meaning it is like an Influenza we don't have a
| vaccine against. We should work hard to create a vaccine
| for this disease, just like we did for influenza, but I
| haven't seen anyone who did the math on if it is worth
| locking things down to prevent loss of life. People in the
| early 1900's didn't think it was worth it, and when I do
| the math with current mortality in Sweden which barely
| locked down then the numbers clearly show that a lockdown
| wasn't worth it.
|
| Influenza mortality by year, vaccine was created in the
| 1940's: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC237480
| 3/bin/Dos...
| xigency wrote:
| Doing the math is an input but it isn't the solution
| itself. The question of what to do is a policy decision
| which doesn't have an objective right answer.
| username90 wrote:
| The moral thing to do is to ask whether someone in their
| 20's would choose to lock down for a few months in order
| to slightly reduce the risk of dying in their 80's. I
| think we all know the answer to that. It is only a
| dilemma of the person would choose to do it for
| themselves but not others, the current measures would not
| be done by almost anyone for themselves.
| rebuilder wrote:
| It seems pretty clear that the systemic effects of COVID-19
| are much worse than those of seasonal flu. You don't see news
| of hospitals struggling to cope with seasonal flu the way
| we've seen now. You don't have Italian doctors triaging
| patients with the flu.
| username90 wrote:
| > You don't see news of hospitals struggling to cope with
| seasonal flu the way we've seen now.
|
| You don't see this news because you aren't looking for it,
| Hospitals are struggling with influenza all the time.
| Example story:
|
| > Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them
| in Tents
|
| https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-
| patie...
| akvadrako wrote:
| You do actually see hospitals struggling with bad flu
| seasons occasionally. I'm not sure if it's more or less
| then from covid.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Don't actually see places struggling with this and
| coronavirus ... most of the overflow hospitals were empty.
|
| In places that have largely opened their economies back up
| we're not seeing any overwhelming of hospitals.
|
| We're also not seeing this in Sweden who never locked down.
|
| Flatening the curve could have been a myth, an incorrect
| response. There's no evidence showing that it was effective
| compared to control groups like Sweden and regions with
| reopened economies.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/0...
| akiselev wrote:
| The disclaimer is in the CDC link:
|
| _> The scenarios are intended to advance public health
| preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or
| estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19._
| entee wrote:
| Nearly 100,000 people have died of COVID19 and there's good
| evidence that this is a substantial undercount. All this in a
| context where we shut down transmission vectors (being
| indoors, with lots of people). Most estimates I've seen
| suggest we'll hit 150k-200k deaths by end of year. 2017-2018
| flu season killed about 80,000 with no mitigation efforts.
| Just on the face of it, this virus is far more than 2x
| deadlier than the flu.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > there's good evidence that this is a substantial
| undercount.
|
| I don't know about the US, but most European countries
| count anyone who died _with_ corona as a covid death. No
| matter how clearly you died to something else.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| If only people with symptoms are being tested, and 80% of
| people are asymptomatic, how are we not drastically
| overestimating fatality rate?
| wbronitsky wrote:
| Where do you see the data that 80% of people are
| asymptomatic? You complain elsewhere in this thread of
| being dismissed even when you have data, yet provide
| none.
|
| We understand that you think that the lockdowns are bunk
| and that this is a big non-issue cooked up by the world
| to ruin our lives; sure, maybe, but where is the data?
| watwut wrote:
| The overall flu mortality estimation counts people we
| guess might have flu, but never seeked doctor. As deaths,
| they estimate how may other deaths are fly and add them
| (like % of pneumonia). There is also fuzziness about who
| counts as death from flu too. For covid, there is no
| added estimation afaik, if you die without test you dont
| count.
|
| It is not like one number was super clean and other
| dirty. Both are dirty and estimations.
| samsari wrote:
| While that may be true, most European countries still
| undercount the true death rates since there are large
| discrepancies between each country's official covid
| deaths and excess deaths.
| natrik wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate, how are we sure excess deaths
| are due to covid and not the lockdowns instead?
| (Suicides, cancelled surgeries, etc.)
| pinkfoot wrote:
| Ok, playing systems-engineer here: we'd call those
| secondary COVID-19 deaths caused by the either _de facto_
| or _de jure_ lock-downs.
|
| Why, oh why, are some people so obsessed with lowering
| the number of COVID-19 related deaths at every possible
| opportunity? Its weird.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Why, oh why, are some people so obsessed with lowering
| the number of COVID-19 related deaths at every possible
| opportunity? Its weird.
|
| Maybe they want to minimize the amount of secondary
| COVID-19 deaths?
| pinkfoot wrote:
| Fair enough, but WHY?
|
| Here is a less contentious example:
|
| 1. consider a severe, long drought
|
| 2. this will damage the livelihoods of many in the
| hinterland - farmers and those in the small town that
| service them
|
| 3. many may be driven to suicide.
|
| Would you not agree that such excess suicides are 'caused
| by the drought'?
| luckylion wrote:
| Yes, but it's not quite the same, because the suicides
| etc for COVID-19 are not directly caused by the virus,
| but by our reaction to it, and some believe it's an over-
| reaction.
|
| I'm not an expert on the actual, real dangers, e.g. how
| many and who will die, so that's not what I'm concerned
| with. If they're terribly high, doing what ever is
| necessary to stop it is right, I consider that obvious.
| "Flattening the curve" makes generally sense to me, in a
| "let's make sure our hospital system doesn't collapse"
| kind of way.
|
| I live in a county of a bit over 300.000 people in
| Germany. We have 10 known active cases in the county.
| We're still in a very constrained soft-lock-down, i.e.
| schools not running normally, half the offices not open,
| mandatory masks, public services on emergency-only-level
| etc. We're still taking damage economically, obviously.
| Lots of people are scared to death in a very real way,
| and are _still_ afraid to leave their houses.
|
| Is it still the right call to remain in this state today?
| Will it be when we have 0 active cases, but there are
| counties nearby that still have more than 0? By saying
| "well, everything that happens happens because of
| COVID-19", we're removing our agency from the equation.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| People are finding it impossible to discuss this
| rationally. If you try to disagree with the seriousness of
| this and even insinuate that the response is incorrect you
| are demonized even if you back it up with data.
|
| The data from Sweden and regions opening up their economies
| are starting to show that there are is no exponential
| explosion of coronavirus cases like predicted, no hospitals
| are being overwhelmed.
|
| The data is starting to show and will continue to show as
| time marches... that quarantine was potentially
| ineffective, the fatality rate was extremely inflated, and
| flattening the curve was potentially a mistaken theory.
| marcell wrote:
| Sure, but 2x deadlier than the flu just means 2 flu
| seasons. It's not great, but we don't do half-lockdowns fur
| 1 flu season. Why do a full lockdown for the equivalent of
| two flu seasons?
| xigency wrote:
| What would the numbers look like without mitigations?
| There are certainly some flu seasons that are 2x worse
| than average. I imagine that the cutoff between no action
| and hard mitigation would be a 10x flu event. It seems
| plausible to me that this would have been 10x the flu
| with business as usual.
|
| That still doesn't do accounting for the negative effects
| of mitigation. The truth is that this is an open-ended
| ethical question and it's not fun to participate in.
| username90 wrote:
| > What would the numbers look like without mitigations?
|
| Look at Sweden, you'll find that their very light
| measures are not worse than the very late but much
| stronger measures of harder hit areas.
| samvher wrote:
| If you compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries
| (which is the most suitable comparison considering
| population distribution and habits) the light measures
| actually seem to have resulted in a much higher
| prevalence.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden
| -co...
| username90 wrote:
| Yes, but not catastrophic prevalence. The question was
| whether not locking down things like schools would result
| in much higher deaths than we currently see in for
| example England or New York. The answer is no, not
| necessarily.
| orwin wrote:
| Targeted lockdown was a good idea in the context (not
| that much different clusters).
|
| Sweden was since the beginning at the place where France
| will be next week, but Sweden did not have the Mulhouse
| cluster that crippled multiple hospitals in eastern
| France.
|
| Many thanks to Switzerland and Germany for helping us
| saving a dozen patients by the way.
| exdsq wrote:
| In Sweden a lot of people were self-isolating and being
| cautious without the need of a formal lockdown. They
| still have the most deaths per capita in Europe.
| username90 wrote:
| Schools were open. A million kids went to crowded
| classrooms every day for the past two months and death
| rate is still not even close to England, Belgium, Italy
| or New York.
| exdsq wrote:
| The number of deaths per capita is higher than England,
| Belgium, and Italy however the total number is lower
| (they have a smaller population). They also have a low
| population density, a lot of single households, and as a
| population have less issues with diabetes, obesity, and
| chronic heart conditions compared to other countries.
|
| It is not black and white :)
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| If you compare Sweden to other countries with full and
| absolute total lockdowns like Belgium the UK and Spain
| and Italy....they actually have lower incidences of
| infections fatalities and higher incidences of
| recoveries.
|
| Sweden is the control group in all of this for how
| effective lockdowns are and it's showing that they're
| potentially not as effective as we think they are.
| orwin wrote:
| You can't compare Sweden to those countries. Not the same
| density, not the same hubs, not hit at the same time, not
| the same social comportments.
|
| Even compared to France they have advantages and they
| have pretty close numbers (+30% excess death vs + 33%).
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Sweden has a higher density of day to day human
| interactions than any country with full quarantine lock
| down.
|
| How do the other data points apply to a country that's
| been on quarantine for months and another that has never
| been on quarantine?
|
| The exponential explosion of coronavirus cases hasn't
| happened in Sweden and it's not happening so far when
| people reopen their economies. there's not even a second
| wave in economies that have been reopened since early May
| like Florida.
|
| The model was flawed.
|
| Time to face facts quarantine was ineffective response.
| entee wrote:
| The major flaw in your argument is focusing on an
| official quarantine order. In practice it seems many of
| the places you mention have an informal quarantine in
| place. In Florida Miami-Dade county did have a lockdown
| though the broader state didn't. It's also the densest,
| so most at risk. Nursing homes also took steps way beyond
| the government order and well before the order. There's
| also tons of evidence that people did not adopt initially
| and are not returning to normal behavior. For example
| even in Sweden restaurant attendance was down massively
| even in the absence of an official ban.
|
| You may be right that a more localized or targeted
| response has almost the same effect as a full lockdown.
| (Though things are still decidedly not great in Sweden
| concerning the death rate). But people are taking massive
| measures even in non-locked down areas, it's improper to
| compare that to the status quo ante.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| If there wasn't a lock down in Florida like you say and
| no hospitals were overwhelmed and no exponential
| explosion of cases happened.... Then that's all the
| evidence you need to know that flattening the curve was a
| myth and quarantine was an ineffective solution.
|
| (the same effect happened in Sweden by the way)
|
| I bet you based on these data points that every region
| that opens it's economy will have the same result. Steady
| state of cases, no second wave.
|
| Quarantine was pointless. A lot of lives were ruined by
| the flat curve proponents...for nothing.
| samvher wrote:
| I do think the CDC numbers seem strange - when I search for
| "flu IFR" and "coronavirus IFR" what I find for flu is
| 0.04-0.2% and for coronavirus it's more like 0.4-1%. So these
| CDC best estimates seem to make the comparison more favorable
| than the numbers found in other places. It seems like a
| factor 6 or so difference is realistic, which makes it quite
| a bit more serious than the flu.
|
| One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu
| is that it can cause lasting lung damage. I personally think
| that the higher mortality and the possibility of permanent
| damage in people who survive justify restrictions, but I
| guess that's a matter of opinion.
| thebladerunner wrote:
| To add to the confusion, the CDC website is calling this
| number CFR (not IFR), which doesn't make sense to me at
| all.
| username90 wrote:
| > One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the
| flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage.
|
| Flu can also cause lasting lung damage. All diseases
| inducing pneumonia can do that. I have seen no evidence
| that these things are more prevalent in corona than in
| influenza. The reason we see so many articles about the
| rare effects in corona and not the flu is that corona is a
| hot topic and news is drumming up scare stories about it
| for clicks.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30209189/
| samvher wrote:
| I agree there is no clear evidence on the prevalence in
| coronavirus vs flu but I think as a naive estimate it's
| reasonable to suspect that if it's around 6x more deadly,
| that serious side effects are similarly more prevalent.
| Considering we don't know the disease very well it seems
| better to err on the side of caution.
| marcell wrote:
| Sidebar, but I simply cannot figure out how the CDC
| estimates flu mortality.
|
| I've spent about an hour trying to find the info, and gave
| up. I was able to figure out how they estimate flu deaths:
| they take the officially diagnosed deaths, and the multiply
| it by a factor based on presumed deaths. For example, they
| assume some % of pneumonia deaths are cause by the flu.
|
| But I simply cannot figure out how they estimate the number
| of flu infections per year, which is the other half of IFR.
| It obviously is a statistical model (they don't do millions
| of flu tests a year), but what is the model? Without this
| info, it's really not an apples-to-apples comparison when
| you take flu IFR and compare it to coronavirus IFR.
| argonaut wrote:
| Doesn't this page answer all those questions?
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-
| estimates.htm
| marcell wrote:
| No! I dug through that page and the cited papers, and it
| absolutely does not have any of the answers to those
| questions.
|
| If you find the answers on that page, I'd love to read
| them.
|
| For example, they say:
|
| > The numbers of influenza illnesses were estimated from
| hospitalizations based on how many illnesses there are
| for every hospitalization, which was measured previously
| (5).
|
| Ok... "estimated from hospitalizations"? What does that
| mean? How are you deriving that estimate? If you read the
| study linked, they say this:
|
| > Multipliers were calculated as the simple inverses of
| the proportions at each step. We accounted for
| variability and uncertainty in model parameters by using
| a probabilistic (Monte Carlo) approach
|
| Ok... so it's a Monte Carlo simulation? What does that
| even mean in this context?
|
| Compare this to the Coronavirus IFR estimates. They are
| easy to understand. They test random samples of people in
| a population for antibodies, and use that to estimate the
| spread of the virus.
| DanBC wrote:
| It's comparing 0.4% and 0.2% but not mentioning
| infectiousness (covid-19 appears more transmissible). 0.4% of
| a very large number will be considerably more people than
| 0.2% of a much smaller number.
|
| It says we do precisely nothing for flu and that's incorrect.
| We have internationally coordinated programmes of vaccine
| development and we have annual programmes to vaccinate as
| many vulnerable people and healthcare workers as possible. We
| have programmes of flu monitoring and surveillance that tell
| us what strains of flu are circulating, who is being affected
| by it, and whether we need to create more surge capacity.
|
| Notice that flu always puts pressure on healthcare systems --
| hospitals get fuller, and they often try not to book as many
| elective surgeries during winter -- but they're not, even in
| bad flu seasons, overwhelmed. We don't have temporary morgues
| set up in container lorries in car parks. Funeral homes don't
| get overwhelmed.
| akvadrako wrote:
| The flu infects an average of a billion people annually.
| That's a big number.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| This is proving not to be an issue in Sweden or any of the
| places that have already opened up their economies.
|
| Flattening the curve was a myth potentially.
| DanBC wrote:
| The very high death rate in Sweden suggests otherwise.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Sweden's death rate is below Italy UK Spain and Belgium
| all of which enacted full quarantines.
|
| Not sure why you're giving incomplete and somewhat
| sensational fear inducing information.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| Just barely below, if you look at the NYT per capita
| rankings [1]. The full quarantines were also enacted too
| late.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/corona
| virus-m...
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| And?
|
| The exponential explosion of infections that was used as
| the model to justify quarantine and flattening the curve
| did not happen in Sweden.
|
| As a matter of fact it's on par with other countries that
| have full lockdowns which indicates quarantine is
| ineffective.
| nunodonato wrote:
| fortunately, more and more scientists and doctors are stepping
| up and being public about why all of this lockdown and social
| distancing thing is not only useless, but harmful.
| Unfortunately, not only they don't get much air time in mass
| media, as they end up being censored by YouTube. Makes you
| wonder why...
| [deleted]
| andybak wrote:
| > Makes you wonder why...
|
| Come out and tell us. I'd like to hear a broad summary of
| your position. I do suspect it's a trifle more conspiracy-
| leaning than you're currently making out. Ending with a dog-
| whistle like this rather amplifies that impression.
|
| (I browse HN with showdead switched on which adds context to
| some comments that are easy to miss otherwise)
|
| I think there's a valid debate to be had about mortality,
| unexpected consequences and over-reaction but the minute I
| start looking into that side of the argument I quickly get
| lost in the thickets of bizarre conspiracy theories and
| extremist views. And even short of the crazies - there is
| some terribly ingenuous cherry-picking of data (although
| admittedly both sides of the debate do this - as is sadly
| true with most public discourse)
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| Conspiracy? Please. One example: two hour-long interviews
| of John Ioannidis from March and April have been removed by
| YT a few days ago. And he is very careful with picking
| words and stating opinions. But he happened to foretell
| (based on reasearch that he was doing at the time) the
| mortality rate comparable to seasonal flu when everyone was
| talking about 1-7%. My point is that if you give even
| slightest attention to alternative info sources, then you
| may clearly see, that COVID is 90% a political/economic
| issue.
| andybak wrote:
| > the mortality rate comparable to seasonal flu when
| everyone was talking about 1-7%.
|
| I don't ever remember anything close to 7% being
| seriously discussed. But also I don't see how people can
| say "close to seasonal flu" without being very selective
| with the data they pick. Bear in mind it's become clear
| that the CDC's seasonal flu figures where high-balled so
| you see a lot of of comparisons between an
| unrealistically high IFR for flu with their own favourite
| low methodology for COVID.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200331/covid-19-death-
| rate...
|
| Literally one of the first links for "covid fatality
| rate", one from March 31st. They mention 3.5% average
| estimate from CDC/WHO with 4.8% for highest risk groups.
| I can't be bothered to find links to original reports and
| statements though.
|
| Can't really comment about the second part, as I'm not an
| expert, but while fractions of a percent surely are
| important from the organizational point of view (e.g.
| estimating loads in hospitals and such), I believe that
| in a broader context the phrase "close to seasonal flu"
| was used to help people relax and stop PANIC!11
| thebladerunner wrote:
| Links?
| nunodonato wrote:
| This was the most recent one: Dr Dolores J. Cahill PhD
| Immunology and molecular biologist -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY
|
| I'll hop by later a drop some more if you want
| thebladerunner wrote:
| Re: YouTube video you linked below. The table shown by that
| Dr in the first few minutes was enough to discredit her
| (claiming Covid-19 is not transmitted by air, only kills
| 80+ year olds, etc.) All falsehoods.
| irrational wrote:
| What age? I've noticed way more young people (teenagers and early
| 20s) exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression than people my
| own age (mid 40s). I never knew anyone with anxiety or depression
| growing up. But that probably has a lot more to do with mental
| illness not being discussed back than it not being around. But,
| even among me friend group nobody exhibited the signs that I see
| so clearly prevalent among my own kids' friend groups. Is it
| social media? Some chemical that has entered our environment? Is
| it something having to do with growing up in a post-9/11 world?
| guevara wrote:
| Part of it has to do with social media. One other reply pointed
| out FOMO and the general toxicity of social media.
|
| I think Mark Manson [0] pointed out how the news is actually a
| bigger culprit in causing anxiety and depression. Given that
| younger generations dominate the demographics in social medias,
| it's likely that that's where they get their news from (which
| is always negative and constructed to make to you react
| emotionally). Thus, it's no surprise that zoomers and
| millenials become depressed as fuck without knowing exactly
| why.
|
| There's also our shitty music and culture. There seems to be
| some glorification of mental illness and depression which is
| insane. Apparently, it's cool to be a "sadboi" or "depressed",
| listen to XXXTENTACION or Juice World, post on Snapchat about
| "loving the rain cause muh depression" and adopt this "woe is
| me" attitude.
|
| Meh, regardless I'd just go with Clint Eastwood and say we're a
| "generation of pussies". Maybe it's the pozzed public schooling
| or universities that caused the pussification of the younger
| generations, but I can't say.
|
| [0]: Think it was a blog post, or a newsletters. Too lazy to
| check. Sue me
| irrational wrote:
| >loving the rain cause muh depression
|
| I live in Oregon and I do love the rain. Maybe I am secretly
| depressed ;-)
| Miner49er wrote:
| Or maybe the negativity of social media and the popularity of
| sad music isn't the cause, but the effect? People listen to
| sad music because they're sad. The news is negative, because
| the world is going to shit. People "glorify" depression,
| because they're depressed. A meme about depression might seem
| like glorification, but it's probably just be a way for
| depressed people to connect. What you call glorification,
| could just be people sharing their experiences with people
| who feel the same way.
| guevara wrote:
| Never considered that. However, the question still remains:
| how did we get here and what caused this trend?
| danharaj wrote:
| late stage capitalism
| seibelj wrote:
| This a low-effort comment
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| I think they would say that their future prospects are a lot
| dimmer than yours were, precisely because boomers have strip-
| mined civilization for their own benefit and left your kids'
| generation holding the bag.
|
| At 37, I'm among the oldest of the millennials and I don't
| entirely agree with that assessment, but I think that's what
| they'd say.
| irrational wrote:
| That doesn't explain teenagers. My teens and their friends
| are not aware of that sort of things at all. That is more of
| a college-student mentality.
| danharaj wrote:
| Teenagers are sensitive to the cognitive dissonance that
| accompanies learning how society works and their place in
| it, even if they're not yet able to articulate those
| feelings. Some are more precocious than others but anything
| a college student would be able to tell you about their
| relationship to society was developing for years
| beforehand.
| [deleted]
| amriksohata wrote:
| I strongly feel there is a link between modern foods and our
| gut/brain axis that is causing a lot of this.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| You may be interested in watching Robert Lustig's lectures.
| MrBeansForReal wrote:
| This, if true, would be suicides sky-rocketing.
|
| Psychology... science... so called.
| catalogia wrote:
| I feel fortunate that I have a south-facing balcony I can sunbath
| on during the day. Sunlight is a great antidote for many people
| when they're feeling blue, but this has now become inaccessible
| to many. Sunlight through windows just doesn't cut it; glass
| blocks too much UV.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Capitalism is the single largest cause of depression. Pass it on.
| aszantu wrote:
| As a person with a history of depression and social anxiety I
| really do feel calmer since the crisis started, as if my state of
| mind was made for this kind of life. Less people on the streets,
| it's quieter, no one breathing down my neck in the supermarket,
| home office, no expectations on how to pick my clothes, how to
| behave, no trying to hide the weird stuff I eat (carnivore, high
| meat, raw, cooked and aged whatever gets on the plate), no forced
| socializing.
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| Did you seek out carnivore/animal-centric nutrition in response
| to gut issues, mental health or something else?
|
| I keep stumbling upon anecdotes of significantly improved
| states of mind since going keto/carnivore. Have you found any
| discussions putting forward a proposed mechanism behind these
| reportings?
| jesperado wrote:
| Not OP but I'm consuming a mostly carnivore diet, I struggled
| with gout for years and since I went keto and then pretty
| much carnivore I haven't had a flare up. I eat meat, fish,
| eggs, cheese and cauliflower (my stool seem fine with or
| without fiber but a little bit makes me feel more "flushed
| out", lol).
|
| The biggest culprit for gout is definitely carbs (sugar) and
| dehydration in my opinion and the carnivore diet and/or keto
| pretty much takes care of that, it eliminates the carbs and
| meat in my experience makes you drink a lot of water.
|
| It is also a lot easier to maintain your weight (also very
| important in the gout equation) on carnivore, I find it
| really hard to over eat, you hit satiety fast and I find that
| there is a lot less noise in the hunger signals. My stomach
| now days only makes itself reminded when I truly need energy,
| no "fake" cravings.
|
| My mental state also seem clearer, I find fat to be a
| smoother source of energy then carbs. Fat is a slow stable
| burn while carbs is a violent explosive burn, which is cool
| every now and then but you pay a price for it.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The biggest culprit for gout is definitely carbs (sugar)
|
| Citation? Because isn't gout generally thought by the
| medical establishment to be caused by high-protein, low
| vegetable diets that raise uric acid?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Not a response to parent comment, but does anyone know of
| studies of people that describe their self-assessment? My
| impression is that most people think they're weirder than they
| are, i.e. most people fall within a band of what everyone would
| call normal, but they often self-assess as weird in one way or
| the other.
|
| i.e. for parameter X which typically ranges between x and x'
| and for which people estimate themselves at x1, they typically
| severely underestimate the size of the range (x,x') and
| conclude that x1 is outside it, when it's really inside it.
| andai wrote:
| I think I'm normal, and everyone else tells me I'm weird :)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, but is it the case that maybe those people (or
| perhaps even everyone) tell _everyone else_ at some point
| that they 're weird? i.e. one problem with this is that if
| someone calls lots of people weird, their calling you weird
| isn't significant. And I'm certain everyone has been called
| 'weird' at some point in their lives, so merely having been
| called weird is insufficient to actually be weird.
| [deleted]
| wayoutthere wrote:
| It really depends! Some forms of mental illness come with an
| inability to understand the illness as one of the diagnostic
| criteria -- this is part of why so many people are internally
| resistant to diagnosis.
|
| I was diagnosed as bipolar 2 a few years ago, and I just
| assumed the mood swings I dealt with were normal. Doesn't
| everyone occasionally get too enthusiastic during a meeting?
| Or call in sick because they can't get out of bed? Turns out
| no, everyone has mood swings from time to time but mine were
| more predictable and severe enough they were preventing me
| from doing the things I wanted to. Hence the diagnosis and
| medication.
|
| This is why mental health professionals are important. It can
| go both ways -- sometimes folks are just neurotic and
| overanalyzing themselves, and sometimes they're oblivious to
| the mental illness they do have. Medication and life changes
| help, but the first step is to see a professional who can
| help you sort through whether your mood issues rise to the
| level of clinical or not.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense. It's hard to use the instrument of
| judgment itself to judge itself. I'm more wondering about a
| healthy individual.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I think it goes both ways though. We have no real frame
| of reference for "normal" -- most of us only know maybe
| 20 people well enough to see the inner workings of their
| mind, and we're probably related to at least half of them
| so anything congenital would feel "normal". It seems
| pretty common that children of people with undiagnosed
| mental illness end up feeling weird or crazy until they
| break free and start to discover the world on their own
| (see also /r/raisedbynarcissists).
|
| Trauma is a huge factor in mental illness as well, so
| much so that the definition of a "healthy individual" can
| only be really anchored to a specific point in time. Some
| things that rise to the level of clinical (anxiety,
| depression, BPD, PTSD, DPD) are largely seen as the
| result of trauma and/or some hereditary predisposition.
| Talanes wrote:
| Plus people tend to be drawn to like-minded people. I
| know that personally the people that I am closest with
| are those who I've bonded with over dealing with similar
| types of anxiety and/or depression. It's just... harder
| to connect that way with a dissimilar mind.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I agree. It's not that my state of life is that great: in many
| ways it's a side-effect of a nasty upbringing that did me harm,
| and I'd be better off without it and am actively pursuing
| repair of some of these mental issues.
|
| But given that I've spent my life with a set of challenges,
| this crisis has given me space to sort out what parts of it are
| ME and what parts are issues needing to be fixed. That's pretty
| valuable.
|
| Even better, I don't think we'll ever go back to boisterous
| 'forced socializing or you are a bad person!' attitudes. There
| are now conditions attached, and that's reasonable (and opens
| the door to conditions like 'I don't have coronavirus, but when
| I socialize like you guys do I panic')
| surfpel wrote:
| I also relate to this.
|
| My hope for cultural change post pandemic is that the shift
| towards remote work will persist after it's over. I love
| being an engineer but I can't stand working in an open office
| or commuting 2 1/2 hours a day.
| buran77 wrote:
| For a while I wondered if I'm the outlier since I feel
| substantially better now than I did before going into
| isolation. Then some of my close friends who were on anti-
| depression or anti-anxiety medication told me the same.
| They actually stopped taking the medication for months with
| no signs that the symptoms are coming back.
|
| It's anecdotal and I have no idea how widespread this is or
| why it happens, at least to people for whom self-isolation
| didn't work in the past. I can only imagine that the
| isolation may relieve some of the social pressure without
| leaving you with the feeling that you have to go to
| extraordinary measures to achieve it, it doesn't feel so
| self inflicted like self-isolation does under regular
| conditions. Now it's an external cause and applies to
| everybody.
| OriginalPenguin wrote:
| You're eating raw meat? Like high quality beef carpaccio? Or
| supermarket meat you don't cook, or?
| warent wrote:
| Do you live in a city? It sounds like you might enjoy living in
| a small town much more. Many small towns are very similar to
| what you just described all the time.
| tylerFowler wrote:
| Have to choose the town wisely... in extremely small towns
| you might find people go out of their way to interact with
| you more and are generally more interested in your private
| business. Part of my family lives in small towns and I think
| they have less privacy than I do.
| gtm1260 wrote:
| I thought I wanted to live in a City but quarantine has made
| me realize I actually want to live in a small
| town/countryside.
| kitotik wrote:
| As a self-proclaimed weirdo and staunch individualist, small
| towns can be very difficult to just mind your own business
| in. Literally everything you do or don't do tends to get
| noticed and talked about amongst the residents.
|
| There's something to be said for the anonymity of large urban
| center.
| _jal wrote:
| Absolutely. I grew up in a tiny town, and loved the ability
| to get way out in the middle of nowhere with no humans
| around. And hated practically everything else about it.
|
| Small towns make your business everyone's. There's a
| desperation for gossip that's just gross to me, and worse,
| if you don't play along, you're an outcast. Which worked
| fine for me, except it makes you a target for local
| shitheads.
|
| I get why others might like it if they're social extroverts
| who fit whatever local majority-normal is, if not, a city
| is a far better place to live.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I've dealt with depression and anxiety for many years. I just
| want to tell anyone who happens to read this: it's ok to ask for
| help, it's ok to go to therapy, it's ok to use antidepressants.
|
| Find the tools that work for you and keep asking for help when
| you need it. (Believe me, I know how hard it is.)
| spicyramen wrote:
| Isn't antidepressants in America one of the reasons of the
| opioid crisis...?
| akiselev wrote:
| No, that would largely be Purdue Pharmaceuticals misleading
| doctors regarding dosage and timing along with an unhealthy
| dose of fentanyl from China.
| DanBC wrote:
| Some medications used for mental health can be addictive, and
| some can have "discontinuation effects" (these are important
| and unpleasant but are not really addiction). The addictive
| medications are the benzodiazepines and the "z drugs"
| (zopiclone, zolpidem, etc (sleeping meds)).
|
| I think mental health medication is good and useful, and I
| think SSRI / SNRI / NASA type meds are very good, but useful
| questions (for any medication) are "What happens if we do
| nothing?" and "what are the side effects of taking it, or
| stopping taking it?"
|
| These medications are not linked to the opioid crisis. The
| causes for that are complex, but they include over-
| prescribing of strong opioids for mild pain over many years.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| I assume that's a genuine question and that you're not
| trolling.
|
| Opioids are a very different class of drugs than anti
| depressants (including medication to treat anxiety).
|
| While people with mental issues may use opioids for self
| medication, no reasonable psychiatrist would ever prescribe
| such medication for psychological issues.
|
| Oxy and their ilk were massively pushed by Purdue and their
| "colleagues" as a non-addictive pain relief if applied
| correctly.
|
| They lied, of course, and that's where the US is now with the
| opioid crisis, since those drugs were massively over-
| prescribed.
|
| It can't be mentioned enough that if you have serious mental
| issues then appropriate medication may be one of the pillars
| to help you out of the deepest circles of hell.
|
| While it maybe a crutch (sometimes temporary, sometimes long
| term) it can be immensely helpful if properly prescribed and
| monitored and seriously be the difference between life and
| death.
|
| edit: slight clarification
| MrBeansForReal wrote:
| I think he is right. Many depressed, long-term unemployed
| folk must have had pains of various kind as depression
| symptoms. I think most folk have used opioids to "treat"
| their depression, nothing else.
|
| Something like Ruskies with vodka when their empire was
| collapsing.
|
| The difference is at least their elites weren't in denial
| about it.
| ponker wrote:
| I've read extensively on the opioid crisis and
| antidepressants don't even make the top 10 in causes.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Antidepressants have nothing to do with opioids. Almost none
| of those who are still on the market even have the slightest
| addictive potential. In fact, even products which only had
| very minor such potential have been withdrawn, even though
| they were much milder than drugs on the market such as benzos
| or opioids.
|
| Also note that opioids are depressants, though that is not an
| antonym for antidepressant.
| qqj wrote:
| I would caution against using any sort of chemicals, try to
| exhaust all other options first. You don't want the sort of
| problem where you feel unlike your own self without some
| substance, not to mention that most of them basically reduce
| you to a zombie.
|
| Sleepwalking through life isn't my idea of living.
| henriquez wrote:
| I think this is an unfair characterization and borderline
| misinformation. Medication can be net positive given severe
| symptoms. Every person is different, and medication for
| psychological issues should not be a first line of defense,
| but it can be helpful and potentially life saving.
|
| When you make a blanket statement like "medication will turn
| you into a zombie", not only are you wrong, but you could be
| turning people away from a potentially life saving treatment.
| qqj wrote:
| I qualified that statement with "most of", and if anything
| comments like yours promote laissez faire attitude towards
| pharmaceuticals, the consequences of which are disastrous -
| as can be seen by the opioid epidemic etc.
|
| Look, drugs work. They work incredibly well for some
| people. You absolutely should avoid them if you can help
| it. Makes sense, no?
| luckylion wrote:
| > You absolutely should avoid them if you can help it.
|
| The issue is knowing whether you can "tough it out". Will
| you make it through without medication? Will you make it
| through in a reasonable time frame?
|
| It's a valid point, but I don't think it's a good idea to
| judge that for yourself. It's very similar to anti-
| biotics. It's a good idea to avoid them in general and
| not take them when you don't need to or when they won't
| do anything. But it's a terrible idea to want to make
| that call if you don't have the training. And it's a bad
| idea to figure "ah, I'm better, I'll just drop these now"
| after a day or two.
|
| I personally believe that the "zombie-like state" is
| blown out of proportion, and I'm certain that even with
| side-effects, anti-depressants are still much nicer than
| going through a major depressive episode.
| henriquez wrote:
| Your qualifier "most of" makes little difference. It's
| wrong and you couldn't possibly know that anyway. I don't
| care to share my own personal anecdotes about my
| experiences with various psychotropic medications but I
| will say that being a "zombie" has seldom been a side
| effect of them.
|
| Bringing up opiates in a thread about psychiatric
| medication is either a deliberate red herring or a clear
| indicator of your ignorance on this subject. Either way
| you should not be putting out misinformation in a topic
| about potentially life-threatening medical disorders.
|
| > Look, drugs work. They work incredibly well for some
| people. You absolutely should avoid them if you can help
| it. Makes sense, no?
|
| I agree with this, but it's a different statement that
| what I was reacting to. Your previous statement was
| wrong, and it's still wrong after you tried to dig in
| further.
| qqj wrote:
| You agree pharmaceuticals should be administered
| judiciously and yet find the energy to disagree on...
| what exactly? Throwing around terms like "misinformation"
| in an attempt to discredit what amounts to essentially a
| common sense conclusion is baffling and borders on
| vitriol.
|
| If you have personal history with mental disorders and
| anti-depressants, I in no way mean to diminish your
| experience, and hope things turn out ok for you -
| whatever the path you choose to take.
| henriquez wrote:
| I apologize if I came off as vitriolic (truly), but I
| found the "zombies" statement to be very offensive, given
| my own run-ins with severe depression in the past.
|
| There are problems with statements like that:
|
| 1. Turns away people who might otherwise have no better
| treatment option ("What's the point of living if I'll
| just be a zombie anyway?")
|
| 2. It comes off as judgmental which has an isolating
| effect to people who are on the treatment. Hearing
| something like this could lead a person to question their
| sanity when they'd otherwise be okay (aka triggering,
| maybe you triggered me!)
|
| 3. It's just wrong.
|
| Antidepressant drugs generally don't turn people into
| zombies at commonly-prescribed therapeutic doses. At very
| high doses they can have an emotionally blunting effect
| and even this is preferable in some cases. There are side
| effects and no one would argue that it's ideal to be on
| these drugs, I totally agree with you on that, but there
| are worse things than being on a drug.
|
| I think you just have to be really careful when you throw
| blanket statements around on these topics because the
| people they can influence are not feeling their best and
| at much higher risk for suicide than people who wouldn't
| care because they wouldn't need drug treatment anyway.
| Personally I hope to never deal with antidepressants
| again, but in the past they've helped me get through
| times when I felt otherwise out of options. And somehow I
| escaped turning into a zombie :)
| Pfhreak wrote:
| This is dangerously wrong.
|
| I went way too long before trying an antidepressant because I
| was worried I'd lose who I was, that I'd face social stigma,
| and that I was somehow cheating.
|
| Turns out they've made me more expressive, energetic, and
| connected to others in my life. The biggest effect is an
| increased ability to break out of mental ruts much more
| easily.
| viklove wrote:
| > Turns out they've made me more expressive, energetic, and
| connected to others in my life.
|
| Sounds like you did lose who you were, medications change
| your personality and that's not something I want for
| myself. More power to you for undergoing that change,
| though.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Your personality is changing all the time. You've already
| lost yourself from 5 years ago.
|
| Even putting aside the question of whether one can lose
| one's self, what is so special about you that you can't
| bear to lose it? I don't understand this romantic ideal
| of self.
| luckylion wrote:
| I want to emphasize especially that it's okay to take
| medication. It's not "cheating", you're not going to get graded
| at the end on _how_ you beat the depressive episode. They 're
| far from perfect and you may have to try multiple times to find
| one that's working for you. I know how uncomfortable it can be
| to get off of SSRIs (brain zaps aren't fun at all!), but imho
| even considering them as part of the package, it still beats
| being down at the bottom _by far_.
|
| If you don't want to take medication, that's okay too. But make
| sure it's not just your depression making you not want to.
|
| And the usual advice applies to depression as well: don't worry
| about telling your doctor. They won't judge you, they've heard
| it before, they can help you. It can feel like a personal
| failure and as if "it's not like other people's depression,
| they have _real_ problems, I don 't, I just can't figure out
| what's wrong with me", but that's part of it.
|
| And also don't beat yourself up if you're self-medicating.
| That's pretty normal. Get help, get more effective medication.
| You're not a lazy alcoholic, you're depressed and you're
| looking for any straw that can offer some support. And if your
| doctor tells you to stop self-medicating before they will help
| you, talk to another doctor, they have it backwards. Don't give
| up.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| But keep in mind antidepressants aren't a panacea and can
| even make things worse. My girlfriend has tried medication
| like antidepressants and anti conception, but basically
| anything that changes her brain chemistry sent her spiraling
| down even more.
|
| Turns out she has ADHD and that class of medication is much
| better at stabilizing her mood.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The prescription system for these things is very ..
| unscientific? Because there's no good diagnostics other
| than asking the patient questions about how they feel. So
| it ends up like the optician's "can you see better with
| this or this?" except the minimum timetable for most of the
| medications is several months to "try".
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I would be very hesitant to recommend someone experiencing
| depression or anxiety as a result of our current state of
| affairs to seek pharmaceutical medications. Certainly, there
| is no shame in it. Indeed, I'd actively support the pursuit
| of medication for anyone experiencing persistent suicidal
| ideations, have become psychologically incapable of
| performing day-to-day activities still required of them, or
| have begun abusing more harmful substances in their stead.
|
| That said, some time ago, I was listening to the BBC's today
| show, and I recall being profoundly disturbed when they aired
| a piece about the NHS either recommending or considering a
| recommendation for the prescription of antidepressants to
| people having trouble coping with the trajectory of their
| society (I wish I could provide a citation, but it was a live
| broadcast).
|
| For many, COVID has sapped what little vitality and
| opportunities they had for joy left in their lives from their
| lives. Their purpose, perhaps defined by a job they can no
| longer perform, or their hobbies contingent upon meeting with
| others. Maybe they're just terrified they won't be able to
| feed or house their families in a month or even a year's
| time.
|
| This is a shitty situation, and people quite rightfully
| should feel shitty about it. Indeed, many of in the lower
| classes should be outright livid that they have to bear the
| brunt of not only the disease but the externalities of
| society's response to it.
|
| We seem to have collectively forgotten that negative feeling
| have value. Anger, sadness, and loneliness are as equally
| valid and important signalling mechanisms as joy, content,
| and love.
|
| If you're living through hard times, it's natural to exhibit
| symptoms of depression for a week, a month, or two. It's a
| not just natural, it's desirable, because it tells you that
| something's in the world's gone profoundly wrong. It's not
| easy, and as anyone who's lived a hard live, or found ways
| deal with moderate or intermittent depression (without drugs)
| will tell you, it takes time to develop resiliency and coping
| mechanisms to deal with that.
|
| I'll reiterate:
|
| There's no shame in seeking out medical help if you truly
| can't cope with how things are, or are losing yourself and
| your desire to live.
|
| But I think it's important to think deeply on it before you
| take that step.
| luckylion wrote:
| > If you're living through hard times, it's natural to
| exhibit symptoms of depression for a week, a month, or two.
|
| Absolutely! But that's also not what I'd suggest medication
| for (well, maybe I'd suggest recreational drugs, but not
| anti-depressants), because it's not depression.
|
| In my opinion, there's quite the difference between
| depression on the one side and feeling overpowered and
| broken because of external circumstances on the other, and
| I wouldn't suggest trying to fix the latter by pretending
| it's the former and medicating accordingly.
|
| It's hard to tell the two apart from your own perspective,
| especially because they _can_ both be true, you can be
| depressed _and_ go through shitty times at the same time.
| At the very least if it does persist, don 't settle for "my
| life is just shit, this is just a normal reaction to that
| shit", go see a doctor. And at the absolute very least, if
| friends suggest that it may be depression, consider that
| they may have a better view of you-six-months-ago vs you-
| today, because they don't see you every second of every
| day.
|
| Depression clouds your judgement, and in my opinion, you're
| not gaining anything from suffering through it. It's not a
| great challenge that's been put in your way and when you
| finally beat it, you're a stronger person. In retrospect,
| at least for me, but some friends have shared similar
| opinions with me, it's just time you've lost, where you
| cannot remember anything from other than feeling terrible,
| thinking about suicide, possibly harming yourself and
| silently hoping that a bus will jump out from nowhere and
| end your suffering. There's no medal at the end, having
| gone through it once does not make you immune, and it can
| take _years_ to get better, and maybe you never do.
|
| I don't know whether I would've listened to anyone if they
| had told me to go see a doctor, but I wish somebody
| would've tried, and I hadn't spent the better part of my
| twenties just suffering for no reason. I'm diagnosed as bi-
| polar, but with much less pronounced manias, and now when I
| sense that I'm sliding down, I'm very active about stopping
| that slide, and if it doesn't stop quickly, I've made it a
| habit to go see a doctor _before_ I think I need to,
| because I 've learned that I might not be able to make that
| call if I'm past a certain point.
| [deleted]
| dgzl wrote:
| I'm always ignored when I ask for help. Being a person who
| "takes it like a man" in a sense, as in absorbs these problems
| for greater overall execution, I'm always ignored when I bring
| up my problems. "Tough shit" is the general attitude. Unless
| I'm highly expressive or emotional nobody takes it seriously.
| But if I'm being that emotional it's already too late.
| ck425 wrote:
| It's worth looking into make support groups. There's various
| movements starting up support groups for men run by men, who
| are trying to break that stigma. I don't know where you are
| based but have a Google and you may find a local one.
| dgzl wrote:
| Funny enough, I looked at my local meetups and the biggest
| one is run by a woman. It's probably a good idea anyway.
| mercer wrote:
| And if possible/available, talking to a therapist can be
| a huge help. For various reasons I don't talk about
| various serious issues to my nearest and dearest, and
| it's been really helpful to have someone to talk to every
| two weeks who is 1) not entangled with the various
| issues, 2) paid to listen, and 3) professionally trained
| to do so.
|
| While, anything is probably better than nothing, I've
| found that it's crucial to find a therapist that one
| 'clicks' with. I wasted quite a bit of time sticking with
| a therapist who didn't help (and possibly made things
| worse, much as she meant well).
|
| If a therapist is not an option, I also recommend support
| groups. In some ways those have been even /more/ of a
| help than a therapist, because the fact that they're not
| paid does matter, and the fact that it's a solution
| without an end-date comforted me.
|
| As a thirty-something, 1) I wish that I looked for help
| earlier, and 2) I would do everything in my power to move
| to a different place if I couldn't find the support
| wherever I was. It's been /that/ helpful.
| watwut wrote:
| Squeaky wheel gets the oil. Absorbing problems for good
| overall execution benefits others, but they get used to it as
| normal and take it as granted after a while. Then they don't
| know what to do on change, because they have no experience
| with it.
| hrktb wrote:
| Not knowing your environment, trying to find other doctors
| could help.
|
| A lot of practicians have surprisingly little knowledge or
| very old views on depression. Some will very strongly argue
| against medication for instance, while others try multiple
| simultaneous approach. Some will throw the same medication
| every time they hear "depression" and call it a day, while
| there is a variety of drugs on the market and a regular
| follow-up on the situation can help find ones that
| effectively work.
| draven wrote:
| I have the same issue for physical problems. I don't like to
| complain and I'm not really expressive. Physical appearance
| may also play a role (I'm 1.95m/95kg.) I had a double hernia
| with sciatic nerve inflammation go undiagnosed for quite some
| time before I took my wife with me to the doc and she
| complained in my stead. In any case, I've been postponing
| going to a psychologist for exactly this reason: I'm
| convinced I won't be taken seriously.
| sonofhans wrote:
| > I'm convinced I won't be taken seriously.
|
| As a fellow large male, I totally hear you. Getting empathy
| can be challenging.
|
| WRT psychologists -- audition them. Schedule initial visits
| with 3, make all those visits, then see if you feel that
| one of them has listened and can help.
|
| This inverts the power dynamic, at least to begin with.
| You're actively choosing someone who will work for you, and
| based on some of your own felt evidence. You don't have to
| worry about "making it work" with the 1 counselor you chose
| to begin with.
|
| This is common practice. No good counselor will be
| surprised by it. Any who argue it can easily be dropped
| from your short list.
|
| Baring your soul to 3 strangers sure can be daunting. I
| find it gets easier. And again, if it sucks with one of
| them, probably that's not the counselor for you.
| mercer wrote:
| I've seen multiple therapists and while every time I
| assumed the worst, every single time I was surprised by how
| seriously my issues were taken, or at least by how willing
| I was to believe this to be the case :). And I'm an
| incredibly paranoid/suspicious person!
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