I have lost three close friends in the past three months to depression. Their deaths were so similar it was shocking; they were all among the most brilliant people I had known, and all had been suffering from depression almost their entire lives.

At the funeral of the one who was closest to me, another girl told a story of how on one day when his depression was particularly bad, he boasted in his great success for the day: Getting out of bed to brush his teeth.

Bear in mind this was a kid who spoke Russian and Arabic fluently, who loved the arts, was incredible at chess, was a great musician, and took Calculus BC in 9th grade. Absolutely brilliant. He was a fighter, he was stubborn, he was young, and some say he took his own life. I prefer to say that depression took his life.

Sorry for getting so personal, but I simply can't take any of the comments that say "just get over it." Depression is as real and as disabling as being paralyzed; it may not happen to everyone, but to say things like, "You need to be stronger" are no more appropriate to the depressed than they are to the paralyzed.

But most of all, if any of you are reading this who have depression, keep fighting. Recognize your brain lies to you, and no matter what it says there are many people who love you and it will get better.

Help, help, help, support, support, support, being able to talk to someone who just listens and does not say 'cheer up' because you CANNOT either cheer or up. Perceive that you are loved and you are counted upon even when you feel the opposite, and that you are not seen as a nuisance (which is what one thinks in that state).

So hard to help, so much in need of it.

  Depression took his life

Thank you and I am sorry for your loss.

Indeed, I've been saying this to myself in dozens of situations, not just depressive moods. If you actually believe it when you say it, it's like a sort of mantra that can replace any pill! ...but unfortunately people suffering from clinical depression can't get themselves into the "saying it and believing it mode".

Just the kind of thing that xkcd does with posters, actually.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_...

but for me it comes and goes, and when it comes I've learned to see the filter, it's just harder to remember what things look like in reality.

but I'm doing well, I dont have it quite as bad as some, and it goes away and I've learned to cope and figure out and get past it, but...

it's never going to stop coming back, and I also know it brings back a kind of brightness and sharpness when it leaves, something I actually do enjoy. I'm sometimes dysfunctional because of it, but mostly... I'm just me, I do alright and I'd rather not change me just yet, so for now I'll deal with it, because it helps me help others.

I hear this platitude all the time and I don't think that it's constructive. Disconnectedness and depression go hand in hand, in my experience. You may be blessed to have many people who love you, but a decent portion of the human population objectively doesn't, and can recognize it. So saying such a thing to a depressed person seems to run a high risk of rubbing their loneliness in their face.

Worse, those bugs are live and their nature is to slowly but surely corrupt the rest of the system software pertaining to beliefs, memory, perception and thought processing. Eventually you reach a point where it's almost impossible to tell what's a lie and what's real, or how to non-dysfunctionally process what you do discover!

This is why therapy is so critical - you have an objective third party to help debug things, identify your blindspots and point out where the bugs in your beliefs and thought processes are. A reference manual for identifying and repairing dysfunctional thinking is also incredibly valuable and to that end I recommend David Burns' "Feeling Good" to anybody in this situation.

Guys, if you're suffering from depression or anxiety, this is the be all and end all of lasting treatments that works. I actually Ctrl-F'ed for it when I opened this thread.

The difference is that it is not always possible to talk someone out of paralysis, but I'd like to think it is possible to talk some people out of depression. So I'd prefer to think of calls to "be stronger" as an attempt at remedying someone's health problems, and not a judgement on their character.

I'll back right off claiming that "be stronger" is an effective remedy, of course.

In terms of arguing for a more sensitive language, there is a call (citation needed) to avoid the phrase "commit suicide" which implies that suicide is still a crime that one "commits."

Nope.

Best thing you can do is have their backs covered and stand by for emergencies while they untangle themselves from depression. Oh yeah, and cover your own ass, depression is contagious.

You generally can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.

> but I'd like to think it is possible to talk some people out of depression.

Here's the thing: It is possible to talk someone out of depression. But that talk is a carefully crafted therapeutic talk, applied by an experienced trained therapist.

Talking to someone without knowing what you're doing probably isn't going to be a long term help. And it might even be harmful.

Thank you for re-emphasizing this. I believe it is the single most important bit of knowledge we can have about depression.

My wife has been struggling with depression on and off for years, and it always frustrates me how she in the depressed periods seemingly belittles and obliterates all the good things that happen around her, while all inconveniences and imperfections, big or small, are considered capital P Problems.

I didn't know much about depression to start with, but it was pretty apparent that this imbalanced outlook was keeping her depression going and making it worse.

If we overslept one day and one of the kids missed the first class at school (for the first time in over a year), she conceives this a significant failure, the teacher will be giving her Looks from now on, and if it happens just fifteen more times this year we are in risk of the child being kicked out of school. While in my view, I think the teacher doesn't care if it happens once, but rather is very happy with us for generally sending a happy and well-dressed child to school, who generally has her homework in order and has been taught that both reading and learning are fun.

So I try to point out the positive things whenever I can, and explain how the negative things won't cause and real damage to us. It does help, but obviously she resists the "fake obnoxious rose-tinted world view" because she can clearly see how everything is wrong. The problem with this is that this endless list of lengthy explanations of everything that is wrong and how wrong it is, and the constant trivialization of the happy moments of the day, is slowly rubbing off on me.

For a long time I was oblivious to how this affected me, until last year after she had gotten better, I suddenly crashed. At nights, I would lie awake for hours - heart pounding - thinking about how I have not done anything useful or significant ever, and how everyone I loved would in the best case be dying painfully of liver failure in old age or something like that. I could barely watch the news, because every distant little tragedy would affect me personally and making me useless for the rest of the day. When my children were running out of bed because they forgot to give me good-night hugs I would sometimes feel absolutely nothing.

Fortunately, my wife is pretty sharp and noticed the problem even though I myself didn't even notice that anything was wrong. She told me that I showed signs of depression, and we decided to keep pressure down for a few months - less travelling, less ski trips, forget about redecorating the hallway, etc.

That helped, and the knowledge that my brain lies to me helped, even though it ran much deeper than I had imagined: my brain constructs both my thoughts, my reasoning, and my impressions. Having to use this same lying bastard brain to "fix" the brain is pretty damn tricky.

We're both pretty much recovered now, but I have two pieces of advice to give:

1. Depression is contagious. If a close loved one is suffering, be sure to constantly keep an eye on yourself.

2. While the brain lies, memory is pretty reliable. When you have difficulties dealing with something, try to remember how you used to react to this before.

I went/going through exactly the same scenario you had. The main point I took (and it took me a few years to do so) is that when she starts on a depressing spiral, no matter how much I love her, I need to separate myself from it. Be slightly colder towards her problem and focus on myself, still take care of herself but not be sucked in too her 'imaginary' problems (like being late for something, or something at home isn't perfect), while that may seem harsh, it was the only thing that worked for me) I started with depressive/suicide thoughts after years of this situation when I always lived a relatively stress free and happy life and I couldn't take it anymore. I explained to her this, and how, even though it maybe be worse for her, it was better for myself and our child if at least I was able to remain 'saner'. It is still hard as well.

As toby mentioned, depression really is contagious. Maybe not 'I'm going to blow my head off' contagious, but after a few years dealing almost 24 hours with someone you love that is depressed, your outcome of life ends so messed up you start spiralling too.

All the luck toby! Bruno

If that was possible in all cases, the concept of mental illness and chemical imbalances would not exist.

We need to have sympathy. Not because we've diagnosed someone with a disease, but because they're a person.

Rates of depression are skyrocketing all over the developed world and whatever we're doing clearly isn't working. Personally, I think the most obvious issue is that a group of intelligent people have simply accepted the notion that what's relevant isn't someone's life circumstances, but some vague and baseless notion of "abnormal brain chemistry".

The idea of depression is a miserable cop-out, it's simply victim-blaming. We say that there is something wrong with their brains, rather than saying that there is something wrong with society. If someone is unhappy, we need to support them. It is a dismal failure of our humanity if we require the justification of medical necessity to show basic compassion.

Swartz had obvious reasons to be miserable and obvious reasons to want to kill himself. We failed him, we fucked up. He didn't die of a disease, he killed himself because he quite justifiably felt that the circumstances of his life were intolerable. We didn't do enough as a community to support him and protect him. He was a young and vulnerable man, bearing the wrath of a spiteful government. It's shameful for us to even consider for a moment that there might be something wrong with Swartz's brain, when our failures to care for him are so obvious.

If we need a scientific explanation for why we should care about each other, that's our problem. If we require a doctor's say-so to provide support for someone in difficulty, that's our disease.

How about people who lead objectively wonderful lives, with good jobs and happy families, but still suffer from deep depression? The problem, if any, seems to be the other way round: that some people think only people will "bad" lives can suffer from depression, and everyone else should just "get over it." That's what seems wrong to me--and if identifying "abnormal brain chemistry" as a cause of depression helps people realise that anyone can be a victim then so be it.

Clearly if someone is suffering then external factors can make it so much worse, but that doesn't mean depression needs an external cause. Sometimes it just is.

The neurochemical hypothesis is incredibly dangerous, because popular perception has drifted so far from scientific consensus. It is an incredibly weak hypothesis with only the scantiest of evidence, but is accepted as solidly proven by a great many lay people - some people in this comments thread describe it as "scientific fact". Most neuropsychiatrists and psychopharmacologists will freely admit that there is no real understanding of what depression is, let alone what causes it.

Many laypeople perceive depression as a simple chemical deficiency, much like a vitamin deficiency - give someone vitamin C and their scurvy goes away, give them SSRIs and their depression goes away. In fact, SSRIs are only marginally better than placebo and have no statistically-significant effect in the majority of patients. This belief is a strong disincentive to seek out psychosocial interventions, which are at least as effective.

Not that I agree fully that brain chemistry isn't a factor. That said, the fact that wealthier countries have higher depression rates (according to WHO) does make me think there is something non-biological involved.

To start with the anthropological theory, let's take David Graeber's notion from Debt about the trauma of slavery. It's not merely being made to work by force that makes a slave. On a personal level, what traumatizes and dehumanizes a slave is that they have been ripped from their context. Everything that tied the free person to their family, their friends, their tribe/nation, their home, their religion, their culture, even their enemies, it has all been taken away.

I think whenever you take someone entirely out of their context and put them in an entirely new context, there is a chance for depression, because I think that on a deep level, depression is a phenomenon of a person being out-of-context, or at least, out of any context that can physically and mentally nourish them in the right way.

I do not mean to discount your primary point - I agree that we all need to take care of each other, but all the caring in the world cant change brain chemistry, and sometimes that really is where the problem is.

But to my knowledge the current(?) model of depression says it is both. There is the clinical depression without noticeable external factors, and there are those depressions which are quite obvious a reaction to an unbearable situation. The clinical depression can manifest itself again and again and will most likely never vanish completely. The situational depression normally goes away if the situation changes - but sure those people need help to achieve that.

Of course, that leads to the conclusion that both causes shouldn't mix, and it doesn't mean there can be no factors like genetically predetermined likelihood for situational depression.

To the first commenter: Saying that it is brain chemistry does not mean we shouldn't help those people. It is the other way around: In saying "this is a serious illness", we make it impossible to say that the depressed is responsible, why didn't he simply change his life? No one can do anything against his brain, apart from medication and maybe - and that is a big maybe - psychiatric help.

Very much this; when you are dealing with starvation and life threatening physical diseases, mental illnesses get short shrift. There may also be a factor that fighting for survival tends to "cure" depression, but that's not a treatment I would advocate.

Is it chemical? In some cases, definitely yes. Could we do better as a society, both on being more accepting and supportive but also changing some fundamental things about our culture (more social/economic mobility, more leisure time, less consumerism)? Inarguably, yes. There's no easy solutions.

Hierarchy of needs masking chemical depression, I'd imagine.

Depression is not only a matter of society or brain chemistry. It's personal circumstances, too. About 1.25 years ago, I had a depressive breakdown that resulted in my leaving my job. Luckily, I came from a family that had always been very supportive and understanding, and through various means got treatment and changed my life to put myself back on a healthier, happier path. But... it's still a little scarring today, on the emotional front. I know that I'm fighting a defensive battle if I put myself in certain living situations.

Thing is, I was in a situation where many people would have thrived and been happy, not become depressed. It wasn't my brain chemistry, and it certainly wasn't a permanent illness. It was partially society, but most people would merely have been unhappy due to those societal factors, not depressed. It was social factors plus my burned-out personal state when it started (that I hadn't really recognized as still-burned-out) plus the social isolation I had put myself into by moving away from home and from my college town with nothing to ground me but a job plus the psychic pain of betraying several of my more important values and dreams.

Part of the problem with depression, though, is that it reduces your ability to think. I can introspect on what was going with me far better now than I could then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

> We say that there is something wrong with their brains, rather than saying that there is something wrong with society.

The real answer is probably a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.

That doesn't mean we don't need to be sensitive to people with circumstances that deviate from the norm. At the same time, our expectations of how we should treat people are calibrated to the typical responses of people in the bulk of that bell curve. It is regrettable but not necessarily wrong when those expectations conflict with the needs of someone who lies outside that region of normalcy. We owe everyone common decency, but we don't necessarily owe anyone uncommon decency.

Having a clear classification would acknowledge that we know there's a difference, but that we still regard non-infectious disorders as very serious because they can be equally awful in their own ways, and they can sometimes respond to medical treatment.

Neurologists disagree. So science says you're wrong.

> Swartz had obvious reasons to be miserable and obvious reasons to want to kill himself. We failed him, we fucked up.

Just because society has failed someone doesn't mean they also didn't have problems.

Yes, the whole prosecutorial situation was adverse. Yes, it was ridiculous. Yes, he could have accepted a 6 month plea bargain… he did things which are if not outright illegal, clearly were not really aboveboard, either.

Yes, I believe that a lot of what people call 'depression' has to do with circumstances[1] -- and you'd have to have been a lot closer to Aaron than me to know if there were circumstances making him miserable back then, or if it was an organic issue, or simply who he was, personality-wise.

Many people in worse situations don't kill themselves. Many people in lesser situations do.

None of that matters. The fact that Aaron took his own life is tragic. I was truly sorry to hear it, but… I wasn't very surprised.

It's simply a fact that things are more complex than they appear from the outside. People are more complex than they appear from the outside. And when you spend a lot of time with someone, sometimes you say "Oh, they're depressed," when really they have a lot of shitty people in their lives; and sometimes it's because they make choices that make their lives miserable; and sometimes it's because they have a real organic issue that has nothing to do with their daily lives or friends/family/job or personal choices.

You can't know, though, from the outside. Only they can know.

That's the fact of the matter.

None of this downplays the need for empathy. I think it increases it. But there's no point in saying "depression is chemical" or "depression is because of shitty circumstances" or "depression is a fault of choices." Unless it's you -- and probably even if it IS you -- you can't ever know which it is.

[1] NOT saying this is to do with Aaron, but just based on my experience of a lot of different people and reading a lot of research -- "circumstances" can include all the obvious external things we think of as circumstances, and also personal, inner circumstance, such as viewing one's self as someone who has to become a world savior or the next Bill Gates, presenting a false face to everyone (result? feeling completely isolated and unknown), the choice to embrace a victim mindset, self-pity, and sometimes "too high standards" which is masking a lack of empathy for fellow people as individuals.

Despite it all, I'm a functioning human being. I function at work so I use this to distract myself. It's a fairly dull job at the moment while I try to do a Computer Science degree. But I've had to defer it due to family pressures and because of this blasted funk. I intended to study in my own time, especially mathematics, but I just can't get enough motivation to do it now. I was teaching myself JPA from scratch, and was making headway, that's gone out the window. I had some ideas for an ITSM app, but that's gone too. I feel like I haven't fulfilled my goals, and a failure.

I'm not a raging depressive, but a few weeks ago I couldn't stop crying. I feel like a burden so I'm trying to hide it all. It leaks out. So I sleep, and this reduces my ability to socialise. I then feel guilty, but nobody is judging me.

It's life I guess. I don't write this to ask for pity, but to explain what it's like, while it's happening. If I had to summarise my mental state, it's like a piece of me has died inside. Knowing that it will go away doesn't really help the feeling, but it gives me fortitude to get to the next day.

I hope this might give some insight to those who haven't felt this way before.

I used to be depressed. Here is my experience. My depression ended about 6 months ago and lasted for about 4 years. Before then I've been depressed on and off most of my life, sometimes as severely as this time, other times just as nearly constant anxiety and a general resignation to the feeling that my character is depressive.

After some time and a big change in my life, I tried to get help. At the start I was helped by seeing a psychologist (who practiced CBT) and by taking medication. Later I couldn't have therapy any more but remained on medication.

I slowly recovered, and I think it was because I was lucky to get on the right track. That track was to be honest about all, and not try to hide any, aspects about myself, to everybody. Also those aspects that may not be perceived as positive in the norms of society. This turned out to be quite a relief. I had decided that I'd do that no matter how much social pressure I would feel from thinking I'd be perceived as different or unaccepted. This had been a fear all my life, and still is. Situations come up quite frequently when I do this fearing total rejection, but I still do it. There's fear but no anxiety. I've come to realise that honesty is much more valuable, and perhaps the most valuable thing of all. Not only to me, but to others too.

Recently I got a tremendous boost and confirmation when I heard about some of the reasoning behind the development of something called Non-violent Communication, in which it is also touched upon depression. I can't say that NC would help others or even myself at the outset, but it made a lot of sense to me.

Very odd, and not helpful. It's very, very hard to get perspective when in this sort of state. Ironically, on HN I seem to be able to express myself. Perhaps putting down the words on the page (or textbox) gives some perspective. I'm sure I can't be the only one who experiences this...

If you'd like to talk about it further just let me know.

The one thing I really want to kick you in the ass on is: get out of bed every fucking day, and you damn well spend time with your friends and family. It's the one thing I know of that can reliably make it feel better.

That's your life right there: friends and family. Your job will be gone someday, and you will achieve that degree someday. What's there for you right now is friends and family.

And if you ever want to talk, on Skype or instant-message or email, you damn well grab my contact info off my Hacker News profile. I've been through this before, over, under, around, through and after.

It's not easy, but it is simple. You just have to keep doing one positive thing after another, day after day. I promise.

The UK NHS National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (http://www.nice.org.uk/) gathers evidence of cost effectiveness (using quality adjusted life years) for various treatments.

They are pretty clear - CBT is excellent for mild depression; CBT and medication combined is more effective than either treatment alone for moderate to severe depression.

The Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org/) carefully investigates all the research, judges its quality, and publishes a meta analysis. They're pretty clear that CBT is effective.

For starters, what do they even measure to estimate effectiveness? Suicide rates? Happyness induced from a questionaire? Brainwaves? Hormone levels?

What does effective even mean? Does it mean the patient did not induce further costs for the health industry? It could mean all sorts of things. For example chaining a patient to a bed could also be very effective in preventing suicide. So if you measure "suicides prevented", perhaps chaining people to beds is the best course of action?

These organisations link to their papers, and to the original studies.

> What does effective even mean? Does it mean the patient did not induce further costs for the health industry? It could mean all sorts of things. For example chaining a patient to a bed could also be very effective in preventing suicide. So if you measure "suicides prevented", perhaps chaining people to beds is the best course of action?

I knew many questions would be asked, but I didn't know what those questions would be. Rather than try to predict which questions would be asked I just link to the home pages so that you can do your own research.

After all, if you're sceptical (not a bad thing) of me you should assume that I'll cherry pick the research that I show you.

You have to understand that people experience life in very different ways. I have experienced depression [0] but I can't speak for anybody else other than to say I know it's hard and keep on.

The real problem with depression is that everybody wants to wash their hands of it. "There are doctors that we can pass these sick people to. The system will sort everything out. That guy's a real downer, I hope he get's help... from somebody else..." I understand that it can be a mood-ruiner and people feel ashamed of it even by association but where is the strength in ignoring things? Compassion would truly be helpful and if you can give it, give it.

Go for CBT and you'll find it largely amounts to filling out forms on your mental state with tickboxes that don't really apply to you, while somebody tries to find out ways that your thinking is twisted. But you can be rational, successful, positive and still feel awful. Do you want to medicate the hell out of the high-functioning, positive guy that wants to change the world [1]? The term 'chemical imbalance' sometimes gets thrown around, and honestly it's probably wrong but there is a truth to it -- often the people that say they have a chemical imbalance are thinking quite rationally but facing terrible emotions that they know they shouldn't have to (from trauma, or an unhealthy subconscious.)

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096568

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg

edit; If you're going to downvote me it would be nice if you would mention why. Do you actually have experience of any of this? I'm trying to give my honest experience on this, and I'm trying to point out that a guy like Aaron Swartz doesn't really fit the neat definitions required by most treatments; and that compassion beyond telling others to 'go to a doctor' is worthwhile.

> Go for CBT and you'll find it largely amounts to filling out forms on your mental state with tickboxes that don't really apply to you, while somebody tries to find out ways that your thinking is twisted.

This is a poor version of CBT. Any practitioner providing CBT like this is doing it wrong.

CBT is not about telling you that you are wrong or that your thinking is twisted. CBT is about exploring with you what your thinking is; what's happening to you with those thoughts; how strongly you feel those thoughts and emotions. CBT is about helping you understand why you feel the things that you feel, and why you think the things you think.

There can be a bit of writing when you begin - some people find it useful to have the process down in a concrete form. There doesn't have to be writing. And checking boxes is not a good approach.

Medication works for some people. But the serotonin hypothesis is controversial.

> Do you want to medicate the hell out of the high-functioning, positive guy that wants to change the world

(I didn't view the YouTube)

Medication can have side effects, and sometimes they're not very nice. But most SSRIs don't have the kind of effects that people would describe as "medicate the hell out of".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivational_interviewing

Edit: re-reading my comment, I think I am coming off too hard on CBT. There are real reasons why clients can come out of CBT thinking the therapist is trying to find what is twisted with them or having them fill out pointless booklets - this does not completely undercut what CBT is about. There is good working going on to combine CBT with Motivational Interviewing to improve treatment of depression and suicidality.

http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2011_Br...

- figure out my mood. this is about keeping checklists on how long i sleep, how i feel, if i took my medication, if i ate correctly. this sounds terribly stupid, but it is very hard for me to even understand what i am feeling. seeing a little graph that tells me "you have been sleeping 16 hours a day for the last 2 weeks, and now you are barely able to sleep for 3 hours, something is going on" is very helpful.

- figure out what i need to do when certain patterns have been recognized. this is for example upping up on sports, being careful about diet, going out to see people when i'm in the down phase. and conversely cutting down on sports, going out, meditation (which makes me way too energetic and stimulated), stimulants when being too far up.

- figuring out my own personal triggers and signs for depression. this is starting to come along, and these are kind of "personal" things. if i want a new tatoo, or learn a new skill or programming language, i should be careful because this is what usually accompanies mania.

it also involves meeting with other people with the same illness, and just for a few hours every year feeling that you are not the only one in that mess.

an interesting thing about the mood graphs is suddenly realizing that a lot of these mood swings actually come out of the blue, or are more related to seasonal effects. it is my brain tricking me into finding causes and patterns and reasons. i don't want to commit suicide because nobody loves me, it's more i think nobody loves me because i am depressed because i haven't gone out for 2 weeks and missed out on my medication 3 days in a row. or because it is december.

i find CBT (at least with the practictioner i have) to be a very no-bullshit pragmatic approach to handling the psychological side of the illness.

but seriously (and in a way, thank god i have bipolar), medication works extremely well, and the one i take (lamictal) has almost no side effect.

So CBT is fine if your thoughts do not reflect reality but if they seem to encourage self-delusion. And maybe that's fine, after all what else is there than perception. But many intelligent analytical people simply cannot willfully deceive themselves.

> But if something like "I screw up on X most of the time" or "I am in the bottom percentile for X" are statements that may occur to an analytical person that are objectively true and may directly cause negative emotions.

Okay.

> My understanding of CBT is that it suggests replacing these thoughts with positive forms like "sometimes I succeed at X" and "I'm better than most people at Y" (even if Y is something neither you nor anyone else cares about).

No.

Someone says "I screw up on X most of the time".

This is objectively true, and causes negative emotion.

Start with "What emotion do you feel?" Perhaps it's something like "shame" or "regret".

The therapist explores with you what your body is doing. When a person feels anxious their heart rate increases. Here's an important bit: try asking someone to slow down their heart rate - they can't. And it's the same if you ask someone to change a thought - they can't. The therapist will explain to you different physiological changes (sweating, breathing, heart rate, tense muscles, etc.) As you become aware of these things you can try breathing exercises to help ease tension.

Then ask what the hot thought is; what is the thought connected to "I screw up on X most of the time" that creates the feelings of shame? Perhaps the hot thought is "Other people get this, it should be really easy, I keep getting it wrong" or "I keep getting this wrong, and my team members have to keep correcting it for me, and it causes them more work and stress and tension".

You assign strengths to the emotions and to the hot thoughts.

You sit with them for a while - you're not trying to change anything yet.

And then, "I screw up on X most of the time"; well, can X be passed on to someone else who doesn't screw it up? Can someone give you extra help with X, or can they spend some time to teach you X? Notice that none of these are denying the reality of X. But now rather than worrying about stuff you can't change, you're giving yourself time to think about things you can change.

> So CBT is fine if your thoughts do not reflect reality but if they seem to encourage self-delusion.

I really fucking hate it when people condemn an evidence based effective cheap therapy based on misunderstanding and ignorance. Your attitude is causing harm to people who would benefit from CBT but who don't try it.

The quotes below are taken from the book and are consistent with my previous description of CBT.

"change the way you feel by changing the way you think".

"... we think that the causes [of our bad moods] result from something beyond our control... you can learn to change the way you think about things, and you can also change your values and beliefs. And when you do, you will often experience profound and lasting changes in your mood, outlook, and productivity. That in a nutshell is what cognitive therapy is all about."

Emphasis mine.

Please tell me we don't have depression Nazis who can only accept one narrow definition of depression. What I see described here is possible how most people experience depression. Or does only extreme depression count?

Depression covers a range of different illnesses, with different severities.

Depression is not a normal reaction to a life event.

When someone dies you feel grief. That grief may be severe. But grief is a normal reaction to death. If, however, the grief is overwhelming and lasts for years, and interferes with your life then it has developed into depression. Depression is an abnormal reaction to life events.

There is a form of depression termed "reactive depression". Something happens, and a person doesn't have a normal negative reaction but has an abnormal extreme negative reaction and falls into depression. The main treatment for that would be to correct the thing that caused the reaction, with some CBT, and medication if needed.

PTSD is also a normal reaction (to extreme circumstances) but it's maladaptive.

Still, I disagree with you that actual depression is a "normal reaction". Sadness and anger are normal emotions that normal people feel. Depression is something else.

People tend to conflated depressed mood, which is transient intense sadness, with the disease of depression, which is something else-- much longer lasting and more devastating.

Unfortunately, the essay does not define it's terms, nor does address why depression specifically deserves sympathy. Near as I can tell, it's just an application of the noncentral fallacy.

Overall, a pretty terrible essay.

More on the noncentral fallacy: http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_worst_argument_in_the_world

Noncentral fallacy specifically applied to medical conditions: http://lesswrong.com/domain/lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_th...

"Sympathy is an extension of empathic concern, or the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another human being. This empathic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint, from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. Empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably, but the two terms have distinct origins and meanings. Empathy refers to the understanding and sharing of a specific emotional state with another person. Sympathy does not require the sharing of the same emotional state. Instead, sympathy is a concern for the well-being of another. Although sympathy may begin with empathizing with the same emotion another person is feeling, sympathy can be extended to other emotional states."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sympathy&oldid...

More scientific research is definitely needed.

To which degree are you...Sad? Have trouble getting things done? Don't find joy in the things that used to make you happy? Thinking about death? Feel any emotions at all? Afraid that something terrible is about to happen? Thinking about killing yourself? Planning to kill yourself? Etc.

It's not an exact science the way physics is, but we are only in the dark ages of mental illness in the sense that a lot of uninformed people don't have any idea how these illnesses are treated by professionals.

Running through a form of questions and ticking off boxes doesn't seem very "advanced" to me. In fact it seems like the very definition of backwards.

Why aren't we aiming for a physics level of understanding in psychology?

But mood disorders aren't in the same ballpark as physical ailments. I mean, even a common infection can be impossible to diagnose unambiguously from a simple blood test, and mood disorders usually interact with who you are as a person. You can't just make a machine that solves this.

I doubt you're the kind of person to be convinced by an anecdote, but I suffered recurring depression and anxiety for a period of five years and was almost completely cured by a combination of SSRIs and CBT. What seemed to make me get these recurring depressive episodes was a combination of unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors. Holding myself to impossibly high standards, having a habit of disregarding my accomplishments, working very hard with no long breaks, being overly critical in social settings and a lot of other small things that were very much part of my personality (and incidentally, very common in the tech community). No one would have classified these behaviors as excessively weird or pathological, but they turned out manifest in long-lasting and serious depressive symptoms. The question is, how are you going to measure behaviors and thought patterns like this with a machine or a physical measurement?

Maybe you could just say that "okay, so the depression or anxiety isn't a symptom of something that's wrong, it's a problem in itself, which we could somehow fix physically or chemically". But then you're moving into some pretty dodgy philosophical territory.

Mood disorders simply can't be a hard science with the degree of understanding we can hope to get in the near future. And although there's plenty of research to be done, the methods we use are pretty good.

I disagree. We know everything we need to know about the halting problem: the halting decision procedure cannot and will not ever exist. There's certainly a lot more we can and will discover about the workings of the brain.

We call that neuroscience. On a related note, Henry Markram just got $1.3 billion EUR for whole brain emulation. So there's that.

I say the real problem is that it's hard to treat.

When you see a close family member or friend suffering, you can't force them to go the doctors, where depression would certainly be diagnosed, and many often just don't go.

The standard set of medication for depression usually takes a couple of weeks to kick in. It's common to see symptoms worsen before they get better during this timeframe. It's gut wrenching to watch if you have personal experience with it.

Effective therapies require effort from the sufferer. If you're feeling really low, it's hard to the put the effort into anything - drops in personal hygiene standards are not rare.

It sucks we don't have a test for it like we have for physical disease but I think a bigger problem is treatment, which is done in a "see what works" manner if the first line of defence doesn't work, which is really damaging when you consider the above.

Is it not possible? I'd like scientific research to say that it is impossible.

I think the answer to both lies in the same area though, since the source of depression is not clear in the brain (I believe there was a study that shown SSRIs have an immediate effect on serotonin re-uptake yet takes a number of weeks to ease depression - implying serotonin doesn't play such a direct role as once believed).

The main issue I have is that people think our understanding of mental illness / psychiatry is as good as say pathology.

My main point is that, from my own person experiences through the whole system, treatment seems the most broken aspect. Diagnosis of depression is possible without a blood-test, as are other physical illnesses, the signs are obvious. The treatment is not as trivial, you won't do well to "let it run it's course", the drugs are gruelling and may not even work and therapy requires drive a depressed person hasn't got.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21749907

Are the diagnostic methods pretty good? Both accurate and precise with very low false positive rates?

Is the medication proven to work for depression?

Sorry but I think a lot of that can be argued that we are still shooting in the dark. I want a test for depression like I test for strep throat. AND I want the "cure" to be repeatable.

Yes we are still in the dark ages.

Yes: "Overall sensitivity was 84% (95% CI, 79% to 89%); overall specificity was 72% (CI, 67% to 77%)" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7755226)

Is the medication proven to work for depression?

There's no such thing as proof in science. A recent meta-analysis: "Most patients treated with serotonergic antidepressants showed a clinical trajectory over time that is superior to that of placebo-treated patients. However, some patients receiving these medications did more poorly than patients receiving placebo. These data highlight the importance of ongoing monitoring of medication risks and benefits during serotonergic antidepressant treatment" (http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=11074...)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3uz18obebxavgff/Gueorguieva-et-al....

The depression that we can't get out of alone -- when we lose all hope for everyone -- that's the hardest to fight. Losing your will to live can quickly lead to suicide. And it's hard to tell from someone else's perspective that you're suicidal because you've pushed everyone away.

I think the only cure to the second form of depression is to practice a healthy state of mind everyday. Enjoy life and friends that are close to someone. Always share your problems with a close person (someone you truly trust). You must have the will to live. Giving up isn't the answer to all your problems because someone else will have to inherit your problems. Which isn't fair for that someone!

Depression is not normal. When you still feel overwhelming grief years after the event, and it's affecting your everyday life and preventing you from functioning, then it's depression.

> I think the only cure to the second form of depression is to practice a healthy state of mind everyday.

I sort of agree - mindfulness and CBT techniques can be used everyday to help prevent depressive thinking.

I've been thinking lately how sad it is that so many of the younger hackers in my local scene (metalab.at) are not as familiar with John Lennons' World Peace movement as they should be. That light was snuffed out, but John (and Yoko, and many, many others) were really trying hard to get a world peace movement established, that would bring more love to the world.

If you turn on the TV today, you don't see much love. Most "comedies" are little more than 30-minutes-ridicule+laughtrack. In fact, remove the laugh-track from most TV shows and you have a banal hate festival.

I think depression being treated poorly, in general, by society is symptomatic of a larger maladay - which is that we humans simply don't trust our neighbors. We don't communicate freely and honestly with each other. You can't smile at a stranger in Vienna, for instance, just for the sake of the happiness - there always has to be the inference of an alternative, sinister, motive. Why is that?

Its because, fundamentally our cultural veigns - the mass communications networks of PR, Advertising, News, TV - don't profit from happiness and good times. They profit from the "black blood cell" of intrigue, controversy, synthesis/anti-synthesis. All we really see on TV is conflict this and that, and if there is some sort of consolation, its usually couched as "irony" or some such emotion.

But what of true Peace, where people are getting along great? There is a lot of that in the world, and it goes under-reported, and just not noticed by the majority. Its possible that depression is a social disease, and is contagious.

But, so is happiness.

We need more overt acknolwedgement of the good times, too, in my opinion - the truly good times, real progress. The aversion of the average citizen towards sharing good news and good times needs to be overcome.

We miss you, John Lennon.

I tend to be the same way. If I was as depressed as I as a few years I would be actively hostile toward the vast majority of the otherwise well-intentioned posts on this submission.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

Speaking from first hand experience, it can be overwhelming and lonely to suffer from mental illness. I have to hide my thoughts from others (including my own wife) because of fear that they won't understand and that they may think of me as a monster.

We have come a long way from where we used to be regarding mental illness (such as blaming poor parenting), but we still have a long ways to go.

The odd thing is that those two weeks were the most socializing ones I’ve ever spent. I felt like I wanted to be with other people 24/7 although it didn’t make any difference to my condition. And this imho is the biggest problem with depression, there are no visible signs that someone suffers from it. So if you don’t know if someone has it how can you help them.

Fortunately for me this hell lasted only a couple of weeks, until my body cope up with the lack of nicotine. I don’t know how I would manage to live with something like that for years or even decades. I have the outmost respect and sympathy for the ones living with depression.

Without trying to be smart ass I have the feeling that depression is a fundamental problem of lifestyle standards. The majority of our insecurities are imposed on us by some wicked version of how life should be. So instead of enjoying the little moments of happiness we tend to believe that happiness is a constant situation which happens to be out of our grasp and thus we hammer ourselves with the inability to get there. And then you end up with a dozen insecurities and everything seems so vain.

Having said that, we should not forget the victim's loved ones left behind, after his/her suicide to grieve and bury the victim. These people are victims too. Sometimes other lives are destroyed by an act of suicide. A young wife left to raise the kids alone. A mother forced to bury an only child; perhaps committed to a life of depression herself.

For the record, I have had my own battles with depression. I have had days I was unable to get out of bed. I have also had suicidal thoughts. But the thought of the pain I would inflict on my family, particularly my mom, would never allow me to truly consider it an option. I don't pretend to have felt the pain that would drive one to suicide, because there are degrees and experiences differ. But it helps to know where I'm coming from.

I think there needs to be more of a stigma surrounding suicide and more awareness for the pain of those that are left to grieve. If you're considering ending it all, please try to get help, and please think of the pain you will be inflicting on those you leave behind.

It seems to be that this definition is more about giving depression PR parity with actual illnesses, rather than a correct label. Its like the public will accept an "illness" as real, but a psychological issues as not real. There for making the public see depression as "illness" helps get support. See what I mean?

From what I can make out, depression is a state of mind. Its a psychological thing. Ie, its a sort of loop people get themselves in to. That, to me, is not an illness. Not more so than arrogance, confidence or anger. Its an emotion. Is love an illness too? I realise that can be debated, but I don't think its helpful to redefine things for PR reasons. To me that cheapens it.

I'm not saying depression is there for less valid, clearly its as debilitating as what I would think of as real "illness", if not more so, but I do roll my eyes and switch off every time I hear the word "illness" appropriated for things that aren't really "illnesses". As I say, the lack of the word illness doesn't, to me, make it less serious. To me, using that word is not necessary, it just blurs the lines and can put people off caring. It make it sound exaggerated or a bit "me too".

Should add that I do understand that there are different types of depression. Perhaps using the single word depression to cover all cases is more the problem that the word "illness".

I'm by no means unsympathetic, I know how it can effect people. I've seen the results of suicide. Hell, my mum's other half had to cut the bloke down while the wife screamed in the street. But I worry that re-defining things puts the general population off.

No idea if these definitions are different each side of the Atlantic. Heh, no idea if its just me who thinks this either!!!

If this is the case, there should be a chemical test to determine whether a person suffers from it. Does such a test exist? I'm unaware of it, but I'd love to read more.

(I'm not asking if it's clinically usable, but merely whether the specific chemicals and levels are known. If they are not known, then "chemical imbalance" is merely a hypothesis.)

Sometimes you have to be willing to look past the studies and trials bought and paid for by drug companies, recognize that every published study, in any field, is complex and flawed, and be willing to admit what's plainly visible even if there an intelligentsia (also purchased) standing by to aggressively shout you down and claim that their fancy documents allow them to define reality and that any naysayers should be ostracized and cast out.

It's kind of funny that this same intelligentsia has now latched onto "bullying" as a pet issue, since it's basically been their MO for many years. Almost all progress gained by this group is gained by shaming less articulate and/or ballsy persons into submission.

It can be and is cured with drugs, and rehabilitation therapy and it takes time. The cure is also a physical change. Sounds pretty disease-like to me.

There's a difference between being cynical, and being depressed. Clinical depression crosses through to the other side, where everything seems unreasonably bad.

Not all "mental states" are created equal. For instance you mention arrogance and confidence. These are are attitudes, or personality traits really, not emotions. Love is similarly not strictly an emotion when you think about it, it's a disposition - we fall in and out of and _are_ in love, but we _get_ angry or get sad, we don't _get_ love. Depression, someone mentioned elsewhere is like a filter, or as someone else mentioned is like having a part of you dead inside, the part that makes life bearable, the part that provides resilience to the sufferer against the unforgiving nature of this world we live, joy for life is snuffed out. One gets depressed but it lasts and lasts, anger by contrast is usually fleeting, so are most other emotions.

Depression usually is accompanied by a broken sleep routine, persistent negative thoughts, morbid thoughts, a lack of self-esteem, an inability to remember that life has its ups as well as its downs. Clinical depression wrecks lives. Perhaps "illness" is not the right word but it certainly seems like a profound psychological disturbance, a psychological illness. When we truly have a 100% neuro-scientific of whatever it is we'll be able to use the right terms but for now "illness" may be the best term we have, so we may as well use it.

Not all "mental states" are created equal. For instance you mention arrogance and confidence. These are are attitudes, or personality traits really, not emotions. Love is similarly not strictly an emotion when you think about it, it's a disposition - we are in love, but we get angry or get sad, we don't get 'love'. Depression, someone mentioned elsewhere is like a filter, or as someone else mentioned is like having a part of you dead inside, the part that makes life bearable, the part that provides resilience to the unforgiving nature of this world we live. One gets depressed but it lasts and lasts, anger bu contrast is fleeting, so are most other emotions.

Depression usually is accompanied by a broken sleep routine, persistent negative thoughts, morbid thoughts, a lack of self-esteem, an inability to remember that life has its ups as well as its downs. Perhaps "illness" is not the right word but it certainly seems like a profound psychological disturbance, a psychological illness. When we truly have a 100% neuro-scientific of whatever it is we'll be able to use the right terms but for now "illness" may be the best term we have, so we may as well use it.

But...

My thinking about mental illness changed a lot after reading a book called Crazy Like Us [1]. It doesn't talk about depression specifically - it's a collection of case studies on how different mental illnesses have been experienced/handled/treated by different societies around the world, and how western understandings of mental illness have generally displaced existing cultural understandings, not always for the better.

The major argument of the book is that the Western view of conditions such as depression as 'mental illness' has been counter-productive to attempts to de-stigmatize such conditions. The author also makes a convincing argument that it's also made recovery less likely for a lot of sufferers.

And to me that makes a lot of sense. Many other cultures view emotional suffering as a normal part of human life. In the West we view it as an unnatural state. We think that by detaching the condition from the sufferer, we're de-stigmatizing it, but the sufferer ends up more stigmatized because... now they are considered mentally ill. And they have less hope of their situation improving, because we're telling them that there is something biologically wrong with them.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Like-Us-Globalization-American/d...

I'm not a doctor. But there is a huge difference between being sad and killing yourself. There are some people who think it is just "in their head" and to "shake it off". There have been lots of diseases in our history that people thought were normal until we made some crazy discovery that what was really causing it was some previously unknown agent.

Imagine being so emotionally hurt that it feels like physical pain, long after you were able to mentally process what initially upset you. Like a pain so chronic and awful that you're willing to do just about anything to make it stop. Imagine how frustrating it is to want to be over something and to think you are mentally past it, but the emotional side of your brain (i.e. most of it) just won't budge. And then on top of it, you feel guilty for being such a drag on people around you. And you also feel paranoid that even when you're not dumping on them, you're alienating them in some way. So you mostly just suffer in silence. It's terribly debilitating.

A friend of mine who undoubtedly would be reading HN today if he were still around evidently felt this way pretty much his entire life. I don't think I would have been able to take it either.

Often times, before a person is known to suffer from depression people will comment on their behaviors/mannerisms as if they're abnormal. Once they realize the issue they are sympathetic but change to "they can't help it, they're depressed." In many ways this can be true, its uncontrollable at times, but for other times they need support, not sympathy.

Support means helping them feel better about what ails them. It means distracting them from their worries with things you know will lift their spirits and help them see the lighter sides of things. When you can't lift their spirits you need to be there until they can move on naturally. A person suffering from depression can focus on a negative aspect of life so intently that it is damaging but as a supportive role in their life you need to look past that.

Don't sympathize, be active in supporting them or get out of the way so someone willing to can.

At deeply depressed stages thought control no longer works and any attempts to "think yourself" out of depression are becoming futile. At these stages depression is fueled by constant intense physical/emotional pain that is constantly present seemingly without any thinking processed. The more intense the pain - the more unbearable it is - and this drives person to suicide as the last resort to stop suffering.

The actual solution in this case it to guide person to look at the pain directly instead of escaping, avoiding or suppressing it with painkillers. Painkillers may be necessary to maintain sanity though through the practice. This is ancient practice talked about by pretty much every spiritual teacher - yet widely ignored. When you feel depressed - locate exact area of painful physical sensations within the body and start observing it. Watch your sensations, watch your feelings, watch them exactly where they are. Do not try to change them, do not try to kill them, just observe them. At the same time breathe and follow your breathing as well. Conscious breathing slows down incessant thinking. Direct observation of painful emotions will start dissolving them.

This is very efficient practice that I personally benefited from during very intense emotional downturns and depressive states.

Some of it can be genetic and I think it can also be copied from other people or passed on. That is why if you hang around with happy people you have a tendency to be happier.

One of the things I noticed in my successful peers is that they go through a period of depression before great periods of productivity or creativity. The depths of depressions or "pullbacks" vary from person to person but most of them show that trait before periods of greatness.

IMO, depression is increasing because pressure is increasing on the average individual in general. From society, to our peers, from the media, from our own competitive nature we are putting more pressure on ourselves to perform or not perform via rebelling.

I am not a doctor, but I know when one of my friends or peers say they are depressed, it is taken very seriously. We all go out of our way to support that person.

Life does go on. Life does change. Sometimes it is darkest before the dawn. Never give up.

In my experience with depression, everyone sympathizes and worries and wants help the depressed person. But being a vicious brain disease, depression will make you think the people who love you actually hate you and lough at you behind your back, when at work, or even while sleeping.

I have been accused of laughing at the person I love while sleeping, by her. No, it did not make me upset. I know it was the demons in hear head making her say that. I had been with her as she descended deeper and deeper and her self-hatred got worse and worse.

So when I hear that we need to sympathize with depression, I think you either have no experience with depressed people, or you're trying to convince anonymous internet trolls. The later is as futile and pointless task as can be. It is better to teach and train people on ignoring the trolls.

I have found this to be nearly crippling when accompanied with the rejection and difficulty of being an entrepreneur. Professionally, I have done a lot of freelance work as a result.

I've held pretty good jobs for ~ 1 year, but eventually have some problem due to workload stress combined with my depression. Regrettably this has made me leave jobs in non-ideal ways.

I'm looking for my next great position now, and it's tough to answer the "why did you leave this position and then go freelance last year" with "I let my depression get ahead of me and tried to kill myself."

I know that it's an incredible liability to a potential employer to hire someone that might do great work for a year and then abruptly leave.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

Having previously been married to someone with depression issues (suicidal thoughts included) I can say it's a bitch. It's hard to know someone like that and not think of them as ill.

Somehow, we've conflated character and loyalty (which are important) with the willingness to suffer needlessly in the name of subordination and whatever the fuck "team player" means.

The brogrammer culture and unnecessary long hours of Corporate America are all about testing people based on their decline curves, not peak performance. It's competing to suffer rather than competing to excel. Who is the first to crack? Fire him. Who is the last to break? Promote him. It's ridiculous and of course it's going to lead to an "epidemic" of mental illness.

In the corporate world, we promote based on participation in shared suffering (i.e. who stays until 1:30am to meet an arbitrary deadline) rather than talent, and we kick people when they're down, which is why it's impossible for someone to get back into the career game after even a short time outside of it (maternity, illness, depression). Of course we're going to have our best people dropping like flies.

Depression and anxiety disorders have always existed, but they don't need to be this common. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at least half of the problem is caused by social and economic forces. These problems are biological at root, but social factors tend to modulate the severity that people experience.

Mark Suster deserves major props for speaking out about this. I've criticized him in the past, but I'm starting to like the guy.

My point is that this article is sort of worthless and whats more, the title is really irritating (because most people already have sympathy for those with depression). How about an article titled - we need to seek shelter to survive winter (most people already do).

What we need to do is a lot more than feel sorry for these people. We need to take action to help them.

They spark humanity, they unite, they bring forward topics that usually no one would want to discuss.

And when all your fears will be dealt with, maybe death will stop be so scary.

(To the other poster, depression is not the same as "being sad" and having a bunch of people around you all the time asking you whether there is something wrong is not necessarily conducive to mental health. (Just to offer a flip side to your oh, there is so much community which is why there is a lack of mental illness anecdote.))

Oh? So we should be informing ourselves with more anecdotal evidence?

"together with severe, extremely severe mood swings"

This sounds like you are bipolar. Happy one day and sad the next is one of the clear signs of being bipolar.

Think about it. You've read historical accounts hundreds of years old that describe these things. It doesn't make sense that this is just a made-up condition by spoiled Westerners, which is usually the first thing that people think when they look at official numbers for anxiety and depression by country.

One thing is clear to me, discussing psychiatry is already a MAJOR TABOO... e.g.: in the article the dude says how he "thinks it has something to do with chemistry... and stuff" clearly in a not-so-scientific reasoning(not that all must be) but just pointing out this sort of questionings leads to major downvoting

By all means, criticize psychiatry. However, I've not seen anything substantive raised in any of the discussions in any of the threads so far.

I'm more than happy to ignore people who use the propaganda from a cult where anything from psychiatry is ignored.

But that's not what I did. I responded to someone who posted scientology propaganda.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_R...

As part of their religious Code, Scientologists pledge “to expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health,” and thereby bring about an atmosphere of safety and security to mental healing. Accordingly, in 1969 Scientologists established the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a watchdog group that investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights.

http://www.scientology.org/activity/citizens-commission-on-h...

What's an example of a physically damaging practice? How about involuntary commitment? How about psychosurgery? Forced electroshock? How about being drugged against your will? How about raped in a psych hospital?

Here is what CCHR does about it:

http://www.cchr.org/about-us/cchr-accomplishments.html

I'd call CCHR a social reform group.

To balance out your links and snippets, here's the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Ri...

"In 1995 CCHR published the acclaimed book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler."

http://www.amazon.com/Psychiatrists-Behind-Hitler-Thomas-Rod...

And another one:

"In 1999, members of the Council of Europe issued a resolution that recognized psychiatrists as the architects of the ethnic cleansing and encouraged Council members to 'study the material that has been put together and researched by the French chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.'"

http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Doc/XrefViewHTML.asp?FileID=8785...

Awesome.

As for the book, you're using the peacock term "acclaimed" and cited an Amazon product page. Not what I'd call a great citation.

This is the problem, of course, with citations. It exposes the hollowness of ridiculous arguments by allowing all to see exactly the underpinning assumptions behind statements and assertions.

This is why I invented [citation needed]. I appreciate you reminding me why I did so.

What makes a great citation? The claim was that a book was published, and I showed the book. Another claim was that a resolution was passed and I showed the resolution. I thought I was doing well until I read chris's reply. :)

I will address chris's point that eugenics is not a theory recognized in psychiatry.

1. Forced sterilization of mental patients was done by social psychiatrists, to improve society by removing the genetic material of mentally feeble and insane.

Reference: Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940. Ian Robert Dowbiggin. 245 pp. Cornell University Press, 1997.

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/how-psychiatr...

http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-America-Sane-Psychiatry-1880-1...

2. The following paper offers historical case studies of "psychiatric genetics" and urges reflection on social psychiatry.

The Eugenic Legacy in Psychology and Psychiatry by David Pilgrim of Mental Health Policy, University of Central Lancashire, UK

http://isp.sagepub.com/content/54/3/272.abstract

3. What about "On human self-domestication, psychiatry, and eugenics" by Martin Brüne in Philos Ethics Humanit Med. 2007; 2: 21. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2082022/

Am I doing better?

I want to thank chris for challenging me to contribute higher quality content.

It would also be helpful for you to research the flaws in what you wish to replace psychology with, if you're going to suggest revolution instead of reform.

Electric shock is still considered a valid form of therapy in the profession (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive-therapy/M...).

It also poses as an "independent" group when its operators are looking not to reform psychology/psychiatry but subvert and replace entirely with Scientology practices. Frontgroups are not a sign of good intent.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64063/

When, before Christ, people noticed your urine attracted ants and that it probably had something to do with a disease(diabetes), that was a more criterious diagnosis. Just saying.

> narcotics that have FDA black warning label that say right on the box that they increase the risk of suicide

The label says the suicide rate among people who have taken these pills are larger than the population in general. It does in no way mean the pills increase the risk of suicide. Interpret this in the context of these pills being given to people who already have suicidal tendencies, and it's much less scary.

This is empirical knowledge that by law must be on all forms of medication. If you are testing a salt water + lemon juice + cinnamon capsule as treatment for high blood pressure, and one of your test subjects gets hospitalized for severe food poisoning from eating shitty take away during the test, and this causes their liver to give out, the pamphlet describing your lemon cinnamon capsules is going to say "very low risk of acute liver failure".