[HN Gopher] Daddy isn't coming back
___________________________________________________________________
Daddy isn't coming back
Author : chesterfield
Score : 109 points
Date : 2021-11-17 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| SapporoChris wrote:
| I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone
| corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it,
| sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more
| we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable
| items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond
| repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix?
| I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if there is some truth
| to it.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You should not feel awful saying this.
| jstx1 wrote:
| If you think about it coldly, that's probably true - there are
| a bunch of different human-mental states, why would all of them
| be reparable? It's more likely that some are and some aren't.
| But all of this is difficult to measure so regardless of what
| state you're in, you do the best you can with what you have.
| slx26 wrote:
| I do definitely believe people can be too broken to fix _in
| certain ways_. I feel like this about some parts of myself. But
| the thing is, that we can 't say someone is too broken to fix
| as a whole, because the paths to be are virtually infinite. So
| that's why most people intuitively lean towards "you can't
| never lose hope". I'd say they are intuitively right this time,
| and yet people can also be too broken to fix in some ways. They
| are not mutually exclusive.
|
| Now, that doesn't say much about whether one should try to
| overcome trauma or try to bury it. That depends a lot on the
| context, the direction you would like to move towards and the
| support you have to do it.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I think the answer must be an unequivocal yes, because there
| are people who exhaust all of their options for intervention
| and then kill themselves.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's a hard question to ask about mental health, but it seems
| like an obvious conclusion when it comes to physical health:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay...
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| This is ultimately a nature vs nurture debate.
|
| Are humans the way they are due to their inherent 'nature'? Are
| they genetically set in stone, programmed and minimally
| changing from a set point(like an object)?
|
| Or are human's the way they are by 'nurture' and does their
| environment influence their essence and with a changed external
| environment they can change as well?
|
| Science seems to believe it's a bit of both. Look at twin
| studies and epigenetic expression of schizophrenia for
| examples.
|
| The issue I see with your argument is that it assumes that
| human's are like objects and therefore heavily 'nature' based.
|
| I think science leans towards more of a balance of nature and
| nurture.
| lazypenguin wrote:
| Objectively, it's possible to be "too broken" to be fixed (e.g.
| acute blunt force trauma, malignant tumor, etc.) where the only
| "fix" is palliative care. Although, I think technically we
| would say: "too broken to fix based on our CURRENT tools,
| knowledge and resources". It's an interesting thought
| experiment to think about how advanced can we become where
| anything is fixable?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| In addition, this gets complicated VERY quickly; it's
| relatively easy to say "This leg is broken; it is not right;
| it needs to be fixed and changed for better".
|
| With mental illnesses though, it's difficult to
| comprehensively, objectively, universally define
| "right/correct/well" and "broken/incorrect".
|
| We all perceive the external world through a faulty set of
| sensors and interpretations which trigger some mental
| processes and reactions. It's difficult to mark some such
| perception/processing as "broken, not worth living". My gut
| feel is that it's more about finding appropriate environment.
|
| Additionally, non-living items are frequently judged based on
| their utility; "too broken to fix" is related to "cheaper to
| replace than to fix". With human beings and mental care - not
| only is it hard to define "Broken" let alone "too broken",
| it's far harder to define "not feasible to repair" - though
| of course, when it comes to public policy, such choices are
| made daily, by necessity. Only so much money to be invested
| into so many programs.
|
| And while I'm rambling, note that myself, and many others,
| there is an inherent double-standard: my threshold for myself
| being too broken to fix is far far lower (and I'm a massive
| proponent of voluntary euthanasia, for myself) than for
| others (I don't want anybody in my life to leave ever)
| akiselev wrote:
| There's a decent Stargate Atlantis episode along these
| lines called Miller's Crossing. The chief scientist McKay
| gets kidnapped along with his sister (herself a brilliant
| scientist) by a billionaire trying to use alien nanite
| technology to cure his daughter of leukemia. In order to
| incentivize McKay to cooperate and fix the nanite coding,
| the guy injects McKay's sister with the nanites.
|
| McKay figures it out but the daughter ends up dying
| because, although the nanites cure her leukemia, they also
| cure an undiagnosed heart murmur by stopping her heart and
| repairing it thus depriving her brain of oxygen and leaving
| her braindead.
|
| They didn't have much time to explore the philosophical
| implications (sadly far too common for these scifi shows)
| but the rest of the episode is a race to disable the
| nanites before they try to "fix" the sister's epilepsy,
| including breaking her bones to create work for the
| nanites.
|
| The only type of nanites in the SG universe that could
| repair a human being without causing crippling unintended
| consequences were hyper-intelligent replicator nanites that
| were hell bent on destroying humanity because they had
| abandonment issues.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Mental illness is not contagious and it is not entirely
| learned either. By fixing it, you are changing the physical
| substrate of the mind. Did you fix anything at all? Or did
| you destroy one mind and create a new one in its place.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Ignorance is not contagious and it is not entirely learned
| either. By teaching anyone anything, you are changing the
| physical substrate of the mind. Did you fix anything at
| all? Or did you destroy one mind and create a new one in
| its place.
| neolefty wrote:
| I think that is a fine question to ask in this forum. Maybe not
| a question that people in the situation described can handle of
| course!
|
| Related may be "Too broken to imagine (myself) being fixed."
| Which is probably more of a failure of imagination (and
| possibly of support) than a reality.
|
| And then you get into what does "fixed" mean, vs "good", in a
| _person_ ...
| seoulmetro wrote:
| The problem is that we know how to fix anything we make and/or
| can see. We can't make or see the human mind just yet, so we
| definitely struggle to fix it.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| There are, certainly, medical situations where we cannot fix
| it, and we let them go. In fact, most of us will meet our end
| in such a way, eventually. The difficult thing about mental
| illness, is that we know so little about how it works (and much
| of what we think we know is incorrect), so that the solution
| might be really close at hand, but we haven't found it yet.
|
| We know when someone's physical health, for example a rapidly
| spreading cancer, has passed the point of no return. We don't
| understand mental health well enough to know that. In rare
| cases, of course, like brain damage from trauma that leaves the
| person in a vegetative state, we know that it will never get
| better, but in cases like this article I don't think we ever
| know one way or the other.
| rksprst wrote:
| I don't think your example works - when a valuable item is
| broken beyond repair that is a fact (based on known physics /
| science). If I snap a ruler into two pieces I know there is no
| way to bring it back to the state it was originally in - a
| single piece. We can glue it back and use other mechanisms but
| it won't be exactly the same - we know this definitively. The
| same cannot be said about mental illness.
|
| We do not have the knowledge and science to make such a
| statement about mental illness. In fact, medical science and
| research shows the opposite, that we are learning more and
| getting better at treating mental illness.
|
| Mental illness is usually not a downhill spiral to death, but a
| roller coaster that you can jump out of. Your perception of
| being beyond repair depends where on the roller coaster you
| are.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Well, there's the _estimated_ work to fix and then there 's how
| ... "valauble" someone is. It's an invisible measure: a little
| bit of celebrity (or how many people know you), some kind of
| reputational Whuffie (will they be missed?), a dash of
| disregard for age("he was so young" versus "it was his time"),
| some men versus women as kind of a global score, then you have
| individual removal. As an example, were Taylor Swift were
| pursued by the black dog, wallets would open up for suicide
| prevention, but some loathed yet similarly known figure not so
| much.
|
| Whatever it is, the never-to-be-acknowledged issue that for
| many, people "care" to an extent that is materially
| indistinguishable from not caring one bit. Most people give
| advice with no skin in the game and no penalties for being
| wrong. Who wants to face the question, "What if it _didn 't_
| get better?" What if you convince some miserable twenty-
| something that it gets better, as the platitude goes, and some
| fifty years later, no, it didn't, that their life was one
| terrible slog through stone-faced despair, lest we "affect
| loved ones" via the taboo of picking the time we board the
| train to Endsville? Whoops, sorry about that, we guilted you
| into suffering for half a century so we wouldn't have to look
| at you. Someone who would have done a Richard Cory instead ends
| up like _Giles_ Corey, and it was just one more weight on the
| plank crushing them down, but gosh we feel good about saying
| the right thing.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| You're not a bad person for thinking it, there's a surprising
| about of nuance in the handling of life, things like "mom's
| suffering brings us no comfort" and then mom's long term
| hospital stay is reduced when she dies quietly in her sleep.
|
| But nobody seems to discuss it.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Well, then, thank you both for discussing it!
|
| I, for one, would like to normalize what is often called
| "dying with dignity" but could also be described simply as
| "intentionally dying." It's not suicide in the traditional
| sense, it's choosing your end of life with the same sort of
| assertiveness that most of us wish to have in all the other
| aspects of our lives. I understand why it's difficult. I
| still think we should be able to be in control of our own
| termination sequence when many of our subsystems are already
| doing so of their own accord.
| csomar wrote:
| That's not how it works in real life. Family (and maybe
| generous government healthcare) will take care of "too broke"
| to give any yield, in the future, people. Anyone else who isn't
| lucky to have that kind of support will find himself in the
| streets.
|
| And that's fine. Societies can only function if the yield from
| the people it invested in is higher than the investment. This
| is why socialized healthcare is tricky. If you invest too much,
| you might be wasting resources and endangering all of your
| society. If you invest too little, you might be leaving people
| who would otherwise be productive once the investment is made.
|
| > Are some simply too broken to fix?
|
| There is no one too broken to fix but how compatible people are
| with their environments. A duck will leave its baby if it
| thinks it can't cross the river. Its brothers did cross, and
| thus it has to go forward, carry on and leave the weak behind.
| On the other hand, if the duck was living in your backyard and
| eating from your food; it would not have to do such a difficult
| choice. Its baby will not need to cross any river and thus
| it'll keep taking care of it.
|
| > I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if there is some
| truth to it.
|
| It's life. Netflix has great series (Planet Earth) that you can
| watch. We are not really different from animals, we just happen
| to live in a different environment.
| totetsu wrote:
| So socialized health care spending millions on a mentally
| disabled child who will never yield return on that investment
| is a danger to society?
| carabiner wrote:
| Many people say this of those who have borderline personality
| disorder. BPD is the top result when you google "most painful
| mental illness," and some therapists either refuse to treat or
| limit their exposure to these patients. And so their imagined
| fear of abandonment becomes real, and their illness worsens.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| in a perfect world, i believe there is a happy and fulfilling
| lifestyle we can carve out for anyone in a well-functioning
| society, no matter where they come from or where they're going
|
| we just need the space / time / resources to supply all those
| different lifestyles that swing outside the mean, and a moral
| code that allows for them all to exist on the same planet
|
| or just more planets...
| amelius wrote:
| Philosophical questions are fine here, I think.
| sandgiant wrote:
| I don't think there is such a thing as broken beyond repair.
| How would you even begin defining that? If you're thinking in
| economic terms then sure, we can try to optimize a limited
| budget to save/improve the maximum number of lives. It would
| still be beneficial to have at least a few people look into
| whether new methods can be developed to increase the amount of
| "good life" you get per dollar. Giving up and deciding
| something is beyond repair can be one course of action in this
| optimization, but it seems counter productive, and perhaps a
| bit unethical, to try and generalize this position. Having the
| thought, and the discussion, is obviously totally fine.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Often it isn't that things are too broken to be fixed, it's
| just that no one cares to expend the resources to fix them. I
| think people are like that.
| podgaj wrote:
| It is not that we are too broken to fix, people are just afraid
| of us because we reveal the fragility of the mental state. And
| people are just greedy as well.
|
| I do not ask for much help, all I need a simple place to live.
| A studio or something that is clean. That would help me so
| much. But all they build now are luxury studio apartments. Most
| of us would be fine with some stability. For the more serious
| cases we should bring back the institutions that they
| dismantled in the 70's.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I
| feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if there is some truth
| to it.
|
| In the criminal justice system, this is essentially what
| pleading insanity recognizes. Many of these people are placed
| in long term mental-health institutions.
| moosey wrote:
| When you say "fixed", I assume you mean that the traumatized
| brain is returned to a state where a person can learn and
| experience positive emotions. In most cases, I would argue that
| it's probable, yes, but I'm not an expert in this area, though
| I spend a lot of time trying to understand abuse (to remove it
| from my own language and actions) and trauma (so that I can
| help my children recover from it).
|
| It is my very slightly educated opinion that given a place of
| psychological, emotional, and physical safety, it is possible
| to train a person to gain resilience. I will also say that
| places that meet these criteria are rare in the United States,
| at a minimum. Our society is highly competitive and attacks
| people who do poorly, even though that's largely assigned at
| random, or is based on already existing/trained resilience,
| which is not well taught in most schools in the US, at least
| not to the extent that it needs to be. Emotional intelligence
| is the primary toolkit for dealing with these kinds of issues,
| and it can't just be taught as a one-and-done. It is something
| that requires constant practice, similar to sports or music
| preparation.
|
| I would even go as far as to suggest that the entire media
| system, for all that it does well, strongly encourages
| reductions in emotional intelligence. Advertising is designed
| to get us to relate to emotions like pride (buy a brand new
| vehicle to be your own person!) or fear. Facebook pushes anger
| at us regularly. The fundamental attribution error is so rife
| and abusive in our society that now we identify ourselves
| almost completely via the categories and labels that are tossed
| around so lazily, inducing category error, outgroup bias, and a
| whole slew of cognitive errors that reduce emotional regulation
| and empathy, key tools in maintaining a healthy mental state.
|
| Given all this working against us, on the other side there
| needs to be understanding that safety isn't enough. Abusive
| language is incredibly common in the US (I don't have insight
| to what the media really looks like in most of Europe, or
| Asia). There are positive actions that can be taken to help
| people around you to heal, and to heal your own mind if you are
| concerned about hieghtened anxiety or depression, but they
| probably require counseling (hard to access and expensive),
| meditation and or pharmacology.
|
| I would recommend understanding NVC (Non-violent communication)
| as a strictly non-abusive method of communicating with others,
| understanding abusive language patterns (name-calling,
| dismissing, condescension, etc.) which are easily found online,
| and also reading books like "Trauma and young children:
| Teaching Strategies to support and empower" by the NAEYC. The
| understanding of trauma, how subjective it is, and how often it
| is associated with thinking patterns and how to modify them, is
| key in helping people recover from trauma.
|
| As a side note: I have had to do a lot of counseling because
| the 750k dead in the US from Covid caused me a lot of secondary
| trauma. I have a tendency to think in the empathetic, and
| updating from empathy to compassion freed up a lot of room for
| new ways of thinking. However, I have access to the necessary
| health care. People who are under intense pressure (month-to-
| month pay, homelessness, bullying, etc.) will not be
| experiencing what is called "toxic stress", which alters the
| brain and practically eliminates the ability to build good
| connections in the prefrontal cortex.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is it can be done, if we reorganize
| society for mental health, or if you have the money.
| tcbawo wrote:
| In my town was a single mother who lived with her adult son
| that struggled with mental issues. She probably had very little
| help through the years, but somehow managed. One day, her son
| murdered her with a knife. It's very sad, but I think we
| generally leave people to fend for themselves when they have
| dependents with mental issues. I worry about disturbed
| individuals that target, stalk, or kill other innocent people.
| Maybe some day we might have a more humane treatment for these
| 'unfixable' individuals. Maybe even a virtual/persistent
| metaverse where they can live out a satisfying life without
| putting others in danger.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| The man in this article was broken, what would it have cost to
| fix him?
|
| We don't have the information you're assuming we do, whether
| the costs are monetary or otherwise there is no estimate for
| what it would have cost to fix the daddy in this story.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| There's an oft-used Lord of the Rings quote:
|
| "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
| Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out
| death in judgement."
|
| What is a broken person? since we're all fallible beings
| ourselves, who could possibly decide that someone is broken
| beyond repair? It doesn't matter if there's truth to it.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I think this is a bit of the wrong analogy.
|
| There's a big difference between judging someone unworthy of
| life and acting to kill them, and judging that someone is not
| worth the energy and struggle to fight against their own
| drive to throw themselves off a cliff.
|
| We're not collectively strong enough to save everyone.
| Getting strong enough is a goal to aspire to, but the dark
| reality is that in our state of weakness, we need to
| prioritize what we struggle to hold onto.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Never heard of "put them out of their misery"?
|
| Not acting and letting them destroy themselves can be worse
| in many ways to them and others around them rather than
| "acting to kill them".
|
| This is a hard truth, I am not advocated mercy killings but
| doing nothing to help them can be worse in many than doing
| something for all involved, which is why most advocate for
| doing something to help even is it seem futile, sometimes
| its as much for everyone else than the person receiving
| help.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I think it really depends.
|
| Ultimately there's a never ending ethical conversation of
| when or if one ever has a duty to act to help others. I'm
| inclined to be believe there's a lot of cases where you
| ethically do have a duty to act, but we're not going to
| resolve the debate of where that line is here.
|
| But there does exist a practical limitations to what you
| can do to save someone. A key rule of any kind of
| emergency response is to always prioritize your own
| safety first, because if you don't you risk creating an
| additional victim and making the situation worse for
| everyone. That can be an incredibly hard thing to accept
| when you see someone suffering and dying, but it's the
| truth.
|
| If you jump in the water to save a drowning person,
| there's a high chance in their panic, they drag you down
| and you both drown.
| csunbird wrote:
| I always remember this phrase, from Harry Potter, when
| thinking about death:
|
| "You are the true master of death, because the true
| master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts
| that he must die, and understands that there are far, far
| worse things in the living world than dying."
|
| A little bit pessimistic, but lifelong suffering might be
| worser than dying outright.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think societies had a simple curve for this. They help,
| help a bit more.. but after some time they drop the ball.
| Most average people have no clue anyway so they are
| powerless about the whole thing. People who know more may
| be able to go further in their efforts, but even then
| you're never sure you can carry someone like that for long.
| Even though .. I dearly think that most suicidal people
| only need a root deep emotional connection. Way too often
| people respond to shared pain, real empathy, understanding,
| trust ..
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| As someone that was on medication that made me think about
| comitting suicide regularly, and I've learned to cope and
| overcome it somewhat...I thought I could read this...but this was
| like stepping into another reality where I was gone and this was
| about me. :S :S. and now I'm sitting at my desk bawling my eyes
| out...just wanting to hold my son and never let him go.
| muuglay wrote:
| Suicide is a hard topic. My mom did it. I don't talk to my
| father. I might be autistic or have aspbergers, and I dont
| understand why I wake up. I'm a robot emulating a human. I have
| to do weed to grt any mystery of a cosmic connection because we
| are strange primates. I hate my job which causes a disease of
| more when even after excelling in a fang job making over seven
| figures, I feel very little joy. I just have hope that something
| will change. I'm going to retire soon. I hope I can find joy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Allocate some time to joy seeking. I think I'm a bit on the
| autistic spectrum... at least I struggled for a very long time
| with human connections, and it changes a lot about how one sees
| life.
|
| The analytical part of the brain is not the only one.. that
| said, I'm neuroscientist, just a dude with a strange
| upbringing.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Talk to a therapist, and if that therapist isn't giving you
| what you need then try another one. If you are shy about
| therapists, there are some programs that let you do therapy via
| text message or video call.
|
| There are a lot of possible causes as to why you may feel a
| lack of joy. The good news is that the vast majority of those
| causes are fixable.
| mikeflynn wrote:
| If you aren't already working with a therapist, I would
| encourage you to do so. I think it would really help, but
| either way I hope you find what you're looking for.
| outworlder wrote:
| There is some research that seems to point out to genetic
| factors. My only experience with this subject seems to
| corroborate this, but it's anecdotal. This is true for some
| other mental health issues too. TL;DR I'd be very careful if
| there's any history in the family, as in your case.
|
| Given that you suspect that you are neurodivergent(you
| mentioned autism), please talk to a professional. Maybe
| figuring out exactly what makes you tick is what you need - or
| maybe there's something that's preventing you from feeling
| 'joy' (anhedonia is a classic depression sign).
|
| Don't wait until retirement. You can certainly afford talking
| to a therapist (from a monetary perspective at least, time may
| be another matter). But just do it.
|
| I think that 'joy' is a target that can't be reached. No matter
| how wonderful one's life become, we'll adapt. Joy is fleeting
| (but you should still experience some occasionally). Not hating
| having to wake up is a good first goal though. I'm also working
| on that part.
| ellyagg wrote:
| Statistics also suggest that, singularly among illnesses, people
| with schizophrenia fare better in the developing world, where the
| rates of remission are higher.
|
| It's because developing countries are low-compliance societies.
| Humans weren't evolved to live in high-compliance societies and a
| lot of us don't care for it at all. Some of us get by. Others
| don't.
| valenaut wrote:
| What do you mean by high/low compliance?
| jarito wrote:
| Not the OP, but I assume they mean the requirement by society
| on how well individuals conform to the expectations of that
| society. In high compliance societies, individuals are
| ostracized / punished for non-conformance - think atheists in
| a religious society. In low conformance societies,
| individuals are able to maintain a high level of privacy or
| society is more tolerant of divergence.
| AdamN wrote:
| Meaning it's more acceptable to not comply with cultural
| standards: i.e. keep standard hours, have a job, not
| marry/have kids, or whatever else the standards of behavior
| are.
|
| I'm not convinced though that developing countries are
| actually lower compliance but that's what the OP means.
| topspin wrote:
| > I'm not convinced though that developing countries are
| actually lower compliance
|
| They aren't, and there is far less opportunity to escape
| compliance. Deviation is an exclusive privilege of the
| prevailing strong men. Everyone else tows the community
| line and occupies their time scrutinizing precisely how
| well others are towing it as well. The romantic fiction
| that there is some great liberty in such places is a form
| of noble savage fantasy that emerges among those that have
| fully inculcated the contempt for their own culture they
| were trained to have.
| watwut wrote:
| It heavily depends on what exactly are you supposed to be
| compliant with. As in, developing countries tend to be less
| organized with all kind of rules being broken routinely.
| With people used to dysfunction, bad service,
| disorganization, bad behavior.
|
| In a lot of ways, it is more tolerant of faults, because
| developed word demands perfection.
|
| But then, when it turns bad it can be really bad. And it is
| not tolerant of everything, many freedoms and choices
| acceptable in developed word are treated with massive
| hostility.
| gowld wrote:
| I've also read that schizophrenia is much less painful in
| countries where cultural/religious context lead people to
| interpret the hallunications as friendly spirits, and not
| government spies using mind control tech.
|
| The way someone experiences schizophrenia may be a reflection
| of their overall societal mental health, and how fearful
| society is in general.
| [deleted]
| foogazi wrote:
| I've had friends tell me that they wouldn't move to the US
| because everything it's too rigid or strict, there are no ways
| out - think HOAs with street cameras strict
|
| They like living in a developing country that allows more lax
| behavior- throw a loud party and the cops don't care, no one
| will sue you either, you can get by without a credit score or
| just grease some palms to get stuff done
|
| Edit: imagine no IRS, or wage garnishment for debts, no zoning,
| OSHA, ADA - basically the state having little power to make you
| comply
|
| More flexibility as the system doesn't form your behavior -
| although at the same time it can come down hard on you if it
| wants
|
| Your rights won't mean much though
| vajrabum wrote:
| That's an assumption I'd say. Another completely different
| possibility is that people suffering from schizophrenia in the
| developing world are generally not medicated. Anti-psychotic
| medications have nasty side effects and perhaps one
| undiscovered side effect is to turn a chronic relapsing disease
| into a permanent condition.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It's a difficult read; more of a personal/lived experience but
| with some stats and thoughts sprinkled through.
|
| I have two young'uns (3 years and 6 months), so it was the title
| and its expansion that got to me the most; telling your kids that
| their parent is not coming back? I struggle to tell them when
| mommy is out for a grocery run! I told the
| children early on Saturday morning. "Daddy isn't coming back," I
| said as we lay curled into each other in bed. "He didn't want to
| live any more and he made himself die."
| aerovistae wrote:
| Not a comment on the story itself, but rather on the postscript
| which follows it:
|
| > If you are struggling to cope or have been affected by anything
| in this story, please contact the Samaritans in the UK at 116 123
| or jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention
| Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. More information at mind.org.uk,
| samaritans.org and save.org
|
| Years ago, unhappy but not suicidal, I decided to call a suicide
| hotline. I did this for the same reason we have fire drills and
| software tests - I was verifying whether it would work if I did
| need it.
|
| It did not work. I was quite disappointed. After my experience, I
| would never suggest to anyone to call a suicide hotline, and I
| realized that most people who recommend them probably have never
| used one and don't know what they're recommending.
|
| The individual I spoke to asked if I was suicidal - I said I
| wasn't at the moment, but then that doesn't mean much, does it?
| _I'm still calling, regardless of what I say._ I would imagine a
| lot of people who call suicide hotlines might not be entirely
| honest about the urgency or seriousness of their emotional state.
| Their reaction was dismissive thereafter.
|
| The person would not make any connection with me - they are
| clearly trained not to do that to avoid certain problems, but I
| feel that in a moment where what a person needs most is a
| connection and is calling to try to seek one out, the total
| refusal to answer any questions at all or be personable in any
| way was like having a door shut in my face. The individual
| continually turned the conversation back to a set of formulaic
| questions that were of no help whatsoever, and I ultimately
| disconnected feeling worse than when I'd initially called.
|
| I do wonder if my experience is representative of the norm or
| not.
| gowld wrote:
| A suicide hotline is not a general mental health therapy. It
| was one function -- to prevent the caller from committing
| suicide in the immediate future. It was successful.
|
| You can't test the effectiveness of a suicide prevention with a
| dry run. Fire drills don't put out fires either.
|
| Also, you essentially admityed that you were making a false
| call. That's not going to get a great reply. You shouldn't call
| 911 to test response time either.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Exactly, and I'm sure they want to keep their lines open for
| the real emergencies.
| aerovistae wrote:
| My point is that it can be hard to tell a real emergency
| from a non-real one. Not everyone is going to be sobbing
| and shouting. Some may sound calm and alright. If you've
| known someone who committed suicide, you probably know that
| there isn't always a flashing warning sign the day of.
| There is sometimes, but it's not reliable. I think it's
| important for a hotline to treat all calls equally.
| mjevans wrote:
| My impression differs.
|
| The caller left the experience feeling more disheartened and
| unsupported. Logically that seems like they were at an
| _increased risk of suicide_ relative to when they called.
| watwut wrote:
| He literally answered "no, I am not suicidal" to the "are
| you suicidal" question. And in fact, he did not became
| suicidal after.
|
| This was not failure of suicide hotline. This was them
| recognizing he is misusing the service.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Called an emergency line after hallucination episode. Woman
| meant well but was very limited in her suggestions and empathy.
|
| I don't blame them though. That said whether or not they're
| optimal.. it's often a good last resort option. Many people
| might have avoided tragedy through some mild listening. I've
| seen it happen on other venues.
|
| [0] To be fair.. most psychology professional I ran into were
| far from perfect.
| have_faith wrote:
| Is your advice based on this single interaction?
| aerovistae wrote:
| Well, I have two options going forward:
|
| 1. Despite my bad experience, recommend suicide hotlines in
| the hopes that they work even though they didn't for me.
|
| 2. Recommend against suicide hotlines while explaining why
| and cautioning that my experience may or may not be
| representative of the norm.
|
| I'm going with #2 for the time being, yes.
| mitigating wrote:
| Recommending against anything because it didn't work for
| you isn't good, even with the disclaimer. Antidotal
| evidence is the worst.
| ebb-tide wrote:
| 3. Not post about something you have scant evidence one way
| or another about.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| 3. Collect more meaningful data before offering
| recommendations?
| wpietri wrote:
| You really can't think of any other options?
| [deleted]
| ccvannorman wrote:
| Why do you feel recommending anything at all is required?
|
| 3. Share my experience, acknowledge this is a single data
| point, and withhold recommendation.
| aerovistae wrote:
| This is a good point, and phrased better and more openly
| than the other replies.
| paxys wrote:
| A single hotline experience not working for you doesn't warrant
| a blanket "I would never suggest to anyone to call a suicide
| hotline".
|
| There are lots of studies that show that such programs are at
| least moderately effective (https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral
| .com/articles/10.1186/s12...)
| thelettere wrote:
| Look at the methodology - borderline laughable. Tells us no
| more than his anecdote does, for there are a million other
| potential explanations - including that it isn't calling
| those hotlines that helps, but knowing that one can, which
| dovetails nicely with research on the benefits of friendship.
| Some things you simply can't test.
| dogleash wrote:
| >I do wonder if my experience is representative of the norm or
| not.
|
| When you need help, you find out pretty quickly that
| institutional support is like bumpers in a bowling alley gutter
| - it's crude and manufactured. It might keep you on the lane,
| it sure doesn't help you bowl any better. You also find out
| that even well-intentioned people aren't much better.
|
| I don't really know how to expand without sounding like a
| depressed person stuck in that self-pittying state where any
| and all actions - internal or external - towards normalcy are
| futile. I don't think that, but there's a mental disconnection
| that prevents a connection from working. For some people, it
| might even require talking to someone in a similar headspace
| just to get on the same page and start talking for real. I've
| found out I helped people after the fact, and I know that if I
| was playing defense I'd probably would have been too scared to
| say the things I did.
|
| Anyway, here's a nice article, the first half of which explains
| that personality mismatch better than I ever could:
| https://eggreport.medium.com/envying-the-dead-skyking-in-mem...
| ebb-tide wrote:
| I used to work at a hotline, and OF COURSE the 'quality' of the
| volunteer varied. We were not trained to avoid anything, we
| were there to stay on the line as long as people wanted, and
| talk about whatever people needed unless there were more calls
| than we could handle. Many people called who were in crisis,
| rather than overtly suicidal, we were there for them.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I can't stand articles that start with "we need to talk
| about...". What the author is really saying is "This topic is
| important to me, and I'd like to pressure you into having the
| same views on it as I do". Regardless of the merit of those
| views, the only thing that ever comes after "we need to talk
| about..." is a description of some hardship the author (or
| somebody the author knows) faced, an explanation of how that
| shaped the agenda they're trying to promote, and some appeal to
| emotion suggesting that their views are the only valid views a
| person can hold.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| That's a pretty harsh view.
|
| Let me try something else: the author notes that 6,000 people
| take their lives in the UK every year. That has a very
| substantial cost, potentially measurable in many ways, but
| let's measure it in dollars.
|
| The US EPA uses a value of about 7 million dollars for a
| statistical life in 2006 dollars [1], or about 10 million 2021
| dollars [2].
|
| The cost of suicide in the UK in the aggregate is something
| like 6,000*10,000,000 dollars. That's a 60 billion dollar
| problem.
|
| Nearly every 60 billion dollar problem is worth caring about.
| Hypothetically, if you could spend $10 billion dollars to
| prevent all of those suicides, you would be generating a $50
| billion dollar gain.
|
| It's worth at least asking of a "we need to talk about..."
| article how big the problem is (on some dimension, whether in
| dollars or otherwise). This one is quite large.
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-
| risk-v... [2] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
| muuglay wrote:
| I'm not sure the 10 mil per life is correct. As a counter
| point value, a highway worker is $10,000.
| woofcat wrote:
| >Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked
| how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in
| their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%,
| over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean
| that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of
| 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is
| sometimes described as "one statistical life saved." Now
| suppose that the average response to this hypothetical
| question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the
| group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in
| a year would be $100 per person x 100,000 people, or $10
| million. This is what is meant by the "value of a statistical
| life." Importantly, this is not an estimate of how much money
| any single individual or group would be willing to pay to
| prevent the certain death of any particular person.
|
| I think it's important to note that the value of a
| statistical life has nothing to do with actual value, or
| money provided into an economy. So it's not something that
| can be taxed against etc. So to me it's false statement to
| say "spend $10 billion dollars to prevent all of those
| suicides, you would be generating a $50 billion dollar gain."
| there is no _actual_ dollar gain. The gain is that the
| average mortality goes down by 0.001%.
| wasteofelectron wrote:
| This is an account of a woman's husband and the father of her
| children being severely ill and dying by suicide, not "some
| hardship" or a "topic". Have some respect for goodness sake.
| You never know when you'll need someone to do the same for you.
| wpietri wrote:
| The author didn't even write that. The subhed is typically
| written by an editor. So in addition to being grossly
| uncharitable, I believe your anger is directed at the wrong
| person.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I really don't think it's grossly uncharitable at all. The
| details of the editorial process aren't especially relevant,
| the article itself is some grim anecdote being used to
| promote a policy agenda. Regardless of the merit of the
| position being promoted, it's intentionally emotionally
| manipulative, it's anti-rational and anti-intellectual. It's
| also entirely based upon the presupposition that the problem
| they're talking about only has one cause, and one possible
| solution. Framing issues in this way means that any criticism
| of the presuppositions of, or conclusions draw by the author,
| is likely to be seen as disparagement of a clearly
| sympathetic person. It's not a rational way to discuss a
| problem, and it's incredibly low quality journalism.
| jstx1 wrote:
| Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious
| mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having
| kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their
| partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of
| self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved
| age to reproduce?
|
| By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea
| of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to
| the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.
| selectodude wrote:
| The body has a clock that's not really compatible with
| that.
| saghm wrote:
| I'd suggest looking up fertility rates for women based on
| age; it' quite difficult for a woman to get pregnant that
| late in life, and for some women it might not be possible
| at all.
| anonporridge wrote:
| That's a technical problem that will improve with time
| and has been actively improving for decades.
|
| It also won't be long before we have artificial wombs and
| can create embryos more expressively than the current 1
| male 1 female demands of nature.
|
| I see a future where one waits even several hundred years
| and dozens of careers and lifestyles before choosing to
| combine their genes and memes with others to spawn and
| raise a new consciousness, maybe even committing to a
| hundred years to raise it.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's historically somewhat common for older, more
| established and financially secure men to pair up with
| young women.
|
| It does seem like a good practical/pragmatic approach to
| raising a family.
| watwut wrote:
| The 40 years old man marrying young girl were business
| transactions.
|
| The normal coupling differences were much smaller
| typically. (Like 6 years or something).
| saghm wrote:
| Women are still people who can have mental health issues;
| the solution of "just waiting until you're 40" isn't
| viable for 50% of the population.
| muuglay wrote:
| Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as
| an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a
| bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the
| dynamic between men and women to introduce more age
| differences for child rearing.
|
| My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had
| delayed then they would have been better off. If they were
| better off then maybe my mom wouldn't have killed
| herself...
| anonporridge wrote:
| While I agree with you technically, there's something
| icky about a community full of older, wealthy men talking
| about how maybe it's actually ideal for older, wealthy
| men to wife up young, fertile women.
| watwut wrote:
| People on their 20 ties are more energetic and better
| handle sleep deprivation that comes with kids. Kids are
| not just costing money, they cost energy and effort.
| [deleted]
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I would think that there'd be a threshold where the
| elevated risk of birth defects would place a ceiling on how
| old parents should be.
|
| 25-35 seems to be the ideal window, where the parents have
| had ample opportunity to get to know themselves as
| individuals, and the risks of a severe disability aren't
| particularly elevated. Afterwards, the risk seems to climb
| very quickly.
|
| https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-
| fat... https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Also social pressure and expectations. How many people would
| feel comfortable saying "Sorry mom/dad/friend/potential
| partner, I'm not going to have kids because I'm worried I
| might not be a good parent or maybe even take my own life"?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| No one is ever ready to become a parent. I mean, "we" (I
| assume we're all in relatively stable, high paying, high
| demand, low risk jobs) certainly are much better placed to
| be them than say, my parents were... But nothing prepares
| you for the abject horror of your entire way of life ending
| in such a dramatic way. I mean... It was worth it, I kinda
| like the wee guy.. But it's BRUTAL at the start.
|
| Doesn't help that all your mrs's intsa-friends are posting
| bollocks about how great everything is while you've been
| trying to get your newborn out for a walk for 5 hours and
| failed.. heh.
|
| Don't overthink that stuff though.. I mean, you kinda know
| deep down if you've got it in you or not. It's kinda like
| having a puppy times a million..
| nonbirithm wrote:
| It isn't just about pressure. I've told people things like
| this while not caring about the stigma and it has always
| negatively affected the relationship, because I'm perceived
| as acting too vulnerable too soon. As a result, none of my
| friendships have advanced past a superficial level.
|
| From my experience, it seems there is a good reason for the
| stigma. Depressed people with pessimistic worldviews don't
| make good friends. The worst time for me to make friends is
| when I need other people the most (such as when I'm
| depressed), but when I don't need people my interest in
| them becomes almost nil.
|
| Also, I highly empathize with the idea that when the fear
| of failure can be linked to the risk of one's life
| spiraling out of control potentially all the way to
| suicide, whether or not those consequences logically
| follow, it takes away a lot of options that might sound
| common-sense to someone of a healthy mind (aiming for
| challenging side projects, putting yourself in front of
| others). For such people, I believe shielding yourself from
| those signals is a valid option for survival, even if it
| means having to deceive yourself temporarily.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| You could simply state that you've lived with depression
| your entire life and that it's not something you'd wish for
| your offspring to inherit... or something along those
| lines. Just make sure to point out early that you're not
| interested in kids, you can bring up your motivation for
| that once you're comfortable enough to share it.
| holdenk wrote:
| My partner and I talked about our health (and mental
| health) in the context of deciding if we wanted to be
| parents to a kid. I like to think that's a normal enough
| conversation to have.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Not even mental health. If this level of self-
| awareness/planning would be universal, we'd reach complete
| societal collapse within 3 generations.
| jandrese wrote:
| Isn't this just the start of Idiocracy?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| many people in that risk group aren't aware of these tendencies
| (now there are words for it we did not have 30 years ago:
| suicidal ideation) until their kids are ready to leave home.
| Plenty of us around with families not knowing how to make it,
| even we've felt healthy all along until some event (or
| cascading events) changed everything.
| skissane wrote:
| I have a long history of suicidal thoughts, and I've even acted
| on them a few times when I was younger (albeit half-heartedly-
| if I'd been really serious about it I wouldn't be here now.) I
| don't know if that makes me "at high risk of suicide" but
| likely people like me are at greater risk than people who don't
| have that history.
|
| And yet, having kids has actually made it _easier_ for me to
| resist those thoughts. They haven't gone away completely, but I
| feel more confident that I'm not going to act on them, and
| their frequency and intensity has definitely declined as well.
| Maybe I _could_ do that to my wife or family or friends, but I
| could not do that to my own children. I think that, if there is
| such a thing as hell-if I did that to them, I'd be going
| straight there.
|
| Having children has given me a new and very compelling reason
| to not kill myself. The best reason I've ever had. It also has
| given me a new motivation to try to keep a lid on my own
| "craziness", which I think has helped my mental health as well.
| OTOH, it has also led to a lot of stress, and no doubt that
| stress has aggravated some of my mental health issues. Still, I
| think overall, the positive benefits of fatherhood on my own
| mental health have outweighed the negatives.
|
| The only situation I can foresee myself now actually going
| through with suicide, is if both our kids died (say in a car
| accident), or if I'm terminally ill and trying to hurry along
| the inevitable. Outside of those two scenarios, I'm definitely
| not doing it. I don't think I could have been so firm about
| that before having children.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Yep. I'm with you. I was chaos and anarchy before becoming a
| parent. Now if I lost mine in such an accident say, I'd
| immediately do it. What would be the point of waiting?
|
| Not because they were the only thing stopping me, but because
| life without them, by now, is incomprehensible.
|
| To be honest though, I think suicide is probably the best way
| to go unless you die instantly. I mean, say I get diagnosed
| with some horrible cancer or other. My son is 3, he would
| only remember me as some kind of horrible pale monster in a
| hospital if I went with the treatments.. TBH, in such a
| situation, I'd probably just wait until I was so sick I was
| unable to function, somehow attempt to say goodbye, write a
| ridiculous amount of letters to him and head off to the local
| euthanasia clinic.. I'm sure I read somewhere a majority of
| doctors who get cancer don't accept chemo/etc.. But I have no
| links to back that up.
|
| Wow! Sunshine and rainbows.
| bladegash wrote:
| As someone who has watched their parent struggle with - and
| ultimately pass away from - lung cancer, I can say that in
| my case the memory of them was far from their last days. I
| still remember them as my dad, the way you do when you're a
| kid. The person that is a superhero and strongest person
| there is/was. FWIW, my dad passed away at home under
| hospice care, with me there to care for him for the last
| few days. It was difficult and not easy to see him that
| way, but I am thankful to have been able to be there for
| him in his final moments, especially since he'd been there
| for me my entire life.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I've still got both ahead, I guess I was a bit cocksure
| about how I would deal with it.. It's a tricky line to
| find for me between 'letting my kid watch me slowly die'
| or err.. not..
|
| This is a ridiculously personal question and just ignore
| it if not, but it's something I've had in my mind for a
| while... If your pop had taken the cyberpunk route, and
| just pissed off during those last 2 months, would you
| have felt him selfish or do you think you could
| understand?
| rekado wrote:
| > I'm sure I read somewhere a majority of doctors who get
| cancer don't accept chemo/etc.. But I have no links to back
| that up.
|
| Perhaps you mean this one:
| https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-
| di...
| krumpet wrote:
| Alzheimers reduced my father to a lost shell of his former
| self, but I wouldn't trade any day I ever spent with him
| for anything. Regardless of the state he was in at the end,
| he was still my father and I loved every moment we had
| together. He was the gentlest, kindest, strongest and most
| thoughtful man I ever knew and that's exactly how I
| remember him. That's just my own opinion.
| kreeben wrote:
| I hear myself in you. I went through some shit. But I have
| two kids and I would never...
|
| Then I got a little better and those daily thoughts became
| weekly, then monthly and nowadays they are simply not there
| anymore. Well, sometimes they are but they are now very
| easily dismissed.
|
| I just came here to say that, if god forbid both your kids
| are taken from you, even then, I would say to you, fucking
| hell man, don't do it. Your loss will crush you and you'll
| never be the same. But you'd be alive. And you'd get to see
| how you'd deal with such a loss. And you wouldn't be alone.
| Because this shit happens to people and with some support,
| they live through it.
|
| Anyways, I'm glad you find such joy in being a father. Isn't
| it great?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I mean, I'm a buddhist.. So I'm kind of 'pro universe' but
| I don't see the point in unnecessary suffering. You're
| telling me you'd keep on going after losing your family?
| Years and years of pain and misery? What's the point? There
| are some things you don't get over.. And even the idea of
| 'getting over' something like that would make me even
| sadder than I would have been immediately?
|
| Sometimes, kill -9 seems to be a valid option to me, all
| I'm saying.. (In a responsible way, get your stuff in
| order, do it in a clinic, etc etc etc)
| xenocratus wrote:
| I took the parent comment's point to be not (just) that you
| could be at risk of slipping back into suicidal thoughts and
| acting on them, but that this might have genetic causes and
| you could end up passing these tendencies to your children.
| At least, I know I've thought/worried about this quite a lot.
| sen wrote:
| Same here, I agree and relate to every bit you said. I always
| thought it'd be a bad idea for me to have kids, my
| childhood/early-adulthood was absolute chaos, abuse, serious
| depression, homelessness, the works. Met "the one", we wanted
| kids, a decade later I can see it's the best thing that ever
| happened to me. My brain can still be a very scary place, but
| they give me purpose/direction/motivation to do better and
| make sure they don't grow up how I did.
|
| I do now have an illness that's "almost definitely terminal"
| (but haven't been given a definitive timeframe yet), and old-
| me would've just ended it to get it over with without a
| second thought, but instead now I'm driven to make sure my
| wife/kids have the best possible life set up before I go.
| downut wrote:
| I have never been suicidal. I do know, having been through a
| months long Stage IV cancer watch, which provides a solid view
| of the terminal medical industrial complex experience. I'll
| efficiently terminate myself before embarking on that way to
| go.
|
| That said, I have never understood why people think that having
| kids has no effect on your mental health. When we had our
| child, I thought nothing of it; I was in a partnership and
| that's what the partner wanted. However, after the year or so
| larval stage, we began to realize that the experience of having
| a kid, steadily growing, seeing the world through changing
| eyes, different from your own: it made us different people. I
| wouldn't have missed the experience for the world, even if the
| terrible twos do happen and the teen years can be a trial.
|
| It gave us a sense of purpose within our own lives. The very
| opposite of a screen or a job or a bucket list! We're very
| different people from the weird/sad, entering their 60s
| childless couples we know, every single one. I'll be kind and
| say they seem mostly ruled by a flat emotional narcissism
| that's... pretty damn boring. I won't say that that never
| happens to empty nesters; it does. But the childless couples
| all seem a bit off.
|
| I wouldn't have a kid with the idea that it would _solve_ any
| mental health problems I might have, just as having a kid seems
| to never solve any couple 's relationship problems. I just
| point out that your mental health is going to _change_ with a
| kid, and I 'd not rule out for the better.
|
| Even with those caveats, we've watched a lot of children
| survive divorce, some ugly. Many of those kids turned out
| superlatively, and for quite a few the divorce seemed to be a
| kind of positive stimulus. Not recommending divorce! Same with
| the death of a parent. Children can be incredibly resilient.
| It's not always about you, is the lesson. A child has a world
| that is bigger than the parents.
| podgaj wrote:
| I have schizoaffective bipolar disorder, and aspergers. I was
| making $130,000 a year as a network engineer at Cisco in 1999
| before I became too sick to work anymore. Right now I am homeless
| living in my van with a transmission about to go. I have
| attempted suicide three times already. I keep thinking about
| doing it again. No one wants to provide me the best medicine,
| stable housing. I make $1700 on disability but I can never save
| enough for a deposit. So what is the point. The fact that I
| cannot get housing just proves no one cares.
|
| And through all this I keep up my research on my familial
| disease, pressuring doctors to at least do some tests. I am
| pretty sure, looking at my genetics, I actually have a
| mitochondrial disorder. This is an easy test, but they will never
| do it. They just keep focusing on the same old pathways and that
| is why there is no progress.
|
| The medications? They do nothing but make me worse. They usually
| give me drug induced lupus or just make me more suicidal the next
| day. The only one I can rely on is Klonopin, it works great but I
| do not take it everyday adn I only take a very low dose, the
| lowest that works. And every time I get a new doctor I face the
| stigma of being a drug seeker. Luckily, that is not so much of a
| problem anymore.
|
| Now iwth COVID, everyone thinks they haev a mood disoder but in
| reality it is just situational, but they take up all the
| appointments so now mine are getting pushed further apart.
|
| My nephew hung himself at 14 years old after a doctor thought he
| had ADHD and gave him ritalin. It was a misdiagnosis.
|
| If you do not have a serious mental illness you have no idea how
| bad the treatments are and how they ignore any other issues you
| have in your body. We are the garbage people in this age but we
| probably used to be the shaman.
|
| So all I can do now is drink a bit to escape, its a great drugs,
| an awesome calcium channel blocker.
|
| Oh well, that's enough of that. Just wanted to share.
| winrid wrote:
| Chevy van? Damn 4L60 transmissions suck. Sometimes it's just a
| solenoid, and sometimes shifting it manually might get some
| more life out of it.
|
| I hope you can get help. I have a few family members with
| schizophrenia / bipolar disorder and the way society treats
| them is like shit.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The fact that I cannot get housing just proves no one
| cares._
|
| All it proves is that there is a big housing shortage.
|
| Have you tried taking your van somewhere where housing is dirt
| cheap?
|
| I hear small poor towns are better at taking care of the
| downtrodden too. Walk into the church poor people go to, and
| see what happens.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > All it proves is that there is a big housing shortage.
|
| Which is a symptom of people not caring.
| podgaj wrote:
| Housing shortage? Probably, but why? In a town I lived in for
| a bit 50% of the houses were second houses, i would drive
| around and see them all dark, sitting there empty. Her where
| I am now, the housing has been moved over to AirBNB. It is
| all greed.
|
| And go to a poor town? And not have healthcare, be away from
| my friends and support? But yes, I have tried it. They ask me
| what I do and when I say I am on disability they deny me the
| rental. And many of these towns will not let you live in your
| van while you are looking.
|
| It is inequality, not a shortage.
|
| I am telling you, you have no idea what it is like.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| You're right, he doesn't. The idea that somehow it is
| sensible, when you're seriously ill, to just abandon your
| entire support network for financial reasons makes next to
| no sense whatsoever. Thank you for sharing your story and I
| wish you all the best.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| Is there a website for compiling the "most vintage hackernews
| (american/hyper-libertarian/indifferent-to-human-suffering)
| comments"? Yours would be there. Simultaneously both
| astoundingly callous and utterly lacking in empathy or
| understanding. Bravo.
| sandgiant wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Getting the right treatment is such a
| gamble. I wish we were better at talking about mental illness
| openly instead of stigmatizing it. Perhaps then we would
| realize the need for better treatments and funding. I have a
| close relative that's been all the way down the hole with life-
| threatening mental illness, but recovered due to doctors
| finding the right cocktail of medication and safe environment.
| Getting to know this person I'm humbled by how ignorant I've
| always been on issues of mental health. I shudder when I read
| comment sections like this one, or talk to friends and family,
| as I'm reminded how pervasive this ignorance still is in the
| general public, and even in professional healthcare. I have the
| deepest respect for people like you, that are hanging on in
| spite of the terrible circumstances you've been given. I hope
| you find some shivers of light in between all the darkness.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I hope my question won't wake up anything, and please accept my
| apologies if they do.
|
| - What hopes did you have when you were younger?
|
| - What did it look like when you started failing?
|
| - Do you think a different turn of events would have avoided
| that?
|
| I feel like I was on the high path up to 25 years old, I'm
| earning now, but I'm getting inexorably rid of my friends, one
| after another. I'd like to know where I'm at...
| wpietri wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I'm sorry that you've been so poorly
| treated. You deserve better. Very many people do.
|
| I recently read Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps The Score", a
| book about trauma and its effects. It's a masterwork, and I'll
| be thinking about it for the next year. But one of the big
| themes for me is the extent to which he, a well-placed
| psychiatrist with a strong mix of clinical and research work,
| had trouble getting the medical establishment to go beyond
| outdated categories and marginally effective treatments. It's
| heartbreaking to think of all the patients so poorly supported
| by the existing system.
|
| It made me realize that as far as mental health goes, we're
| living in an age that people will later look at with horror. It
| makes me think of Semmelweis [1], who had the then-radical idea
| that surgeons should wash their hands before cutting people
| open. Many in the establishment mocked him. How dare he call
| them dirty! He ended up being committed to an asylum where he
| was beaten; he died 2 weeks later from a gangrenous wound.
| Eventually people realized he was right, but too late for him.
| And for who knows how many deaths.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
| SapporoChris wrote:
| A difficult situation. I am impressed by your success at Cisco.
| If you had that capability, you still have that capability.You
| have significant hurdles to overcome, but you do have the
| opportunity to make it. I won't offer you platitudes, but I
| encourage you to keep trying.
| gowld wrote:
| > I actually have a mitochondrial disorder.
|
| If you do, what treatment options does that offer? Can you
| pursue that treatment without an official diagnosis?
|
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15612-mitocho...
|
| mentions no prescription-restricted treatments, just vitamins,
| diet, exercise, and rest. It mentions therapy, but general
| skills therapy, nothing specific to mitochondrial disease.
| windock wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear it is so bad. Thank you for sharing
| sadmandeathsoon wrote:
| The truth is no one cares about men. Death is the peace we will
| get.
|
| Society expects us to be obedient tax cows. Women expect us to
| breadbringers.
|
| Hillary Clinton once said:""" "Women have always been the primary
| victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their
| sons in combat. """ Unironically marginalizing the death of men.
|
| The existing social contract has failed men. It's better to die
| fast than suffer a long humiliating and slow death.
| chesterfield wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20211117073557/https://www.ft.com...
|
| https://archive.md/DvlP6
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