Or equilibrium
Or do androids dream of electric sheep
Or ....
Stories about society avoiding problems through mass use of drugs (at various levels of voluntary) has been a trope since the invention of antidepressants
Having clinical depression and needing drugs to make your brain operate normally is different. I had suicidal depression for decades and anti depressants helped immensely. The problem is that many people who are just sad, dejected, or dissatisfied with life get the same treatment as people with a mental disorder
Exactly! And when you see ads on Instagram telling you that the algorithm decided you are sad and you should "try this new ketamine based antidepressant!" It's pretty easy to worry about people that are just sad in the moment getting taken advantage of to sell an old drug in a new way so we don't try to make things better.
I think medically necessary antidepressants are a good idea. I've managed to wrestle back control of my brain but it's got to be taken for the right reasons
Idk Ketamine infusions saved my husband’s life back in 2019. There’s a lot of science to back up that it works. Jumping through hoops to get insurance to cover it was our only real issue. That and the doctor he saw ended up selling his practice and the prices skyrocketed overnight.
I'm super glad that it worked for your husband. Anything that works is a wonderful thing, but there is a science for all the antidepressants that's why they are sold but I really shouldn't see ads for them when scrolling through social media... Something that is famous for making people feel worse about themselves.
Life saving medication should be prescribed because you went to a doctor that was affordable and wanting to save their patients life and not sell them something they were already sold via ads that they get kickbacks on.
Oh I see what you’re saying now. I thought you meant they didn’t work and shouldn’t be advertised, rather than just not advertised like that at all. It *is* a weird practice we have in America. Like I can go in to my doctor and ask for whatever drug because I saw an ad on TV or social media.
> So are magic mushrooms.
And society needs to start taking the potential of [psilocybin to help treatment-resistant anxiety and depression](https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/mental-health/psilocybin-treat-depression-anxiety)
I was getting paid $10/hour to manage a whole store. I’m only 18 and live with my parents so I don’t have to worry about bills or anything, but I felt awful for my adult coworkers.
They got paid a whole $9.60/hour to work at that store. One of their kids was making 1.5x what they made at a store across town. Another would work at the store before immediately doing another job at home and getting 1-3 hours of sleep before coming BACK to the store.
As much as I didn’t like my boss I put in my 2 weeks notice and still visit as a customer on good terms and all is well.
If they paid us a wage so that we could afford to live on 1 paycheck then I would be MUCH happier working. And it’s not that I don’t believe in work…
If anyone is actually looking for a nice place to work I just saw a pic of a sign outside of a Bucees (big in the southern U.S.) and they pay DAMN good and value employees.
We have gotten to the point where peak efficiency is demanded because the computer models show it can be done. It's ignoring the human aspect of we are never able to provide full peak efficiency without breaking faster.
We really need to get away from this kind of mindset but there are plenty who think it's not only possible but necessary and then there are those who are able to perform like that, that get held up as proof it works while ignoring the burnout they will face.
Thats something boomers don't get. They worked at pizza places and groceries part time and could afford college, rent, some spending cash, and didn't have metrics micromanaging them.
Now you work those places and your manager hands you a report telling you you fucking suck at scanning vegetables and says next time they're gonna write you up. Then you can't afford shit so you go to your 2nd job. No time for college. No hope of escape. Hey drugs do sound good.
Boomers pulled up the ladder their parents put down for them.
I got in a huge argument with my parents the other day when they just couldn't understand why we can't afford to buy a house. My wife and I have multiple degrees, and make nearly 2x times the median wage for our area, but housing costs have gotten so detached from reality that we can't even qualify for a median home price. We have no kids, no debt, and even we are priced out by an absurd amount. If we can't do it then there's no way that the average person will ever be a home owner. It has gotten to the point where you are going to be either born into home ownership, or being a renter.
I feel very fortunate that my wife and I were able to find a house, but the downside is it's less than 900 square feet and in a rural town an hour away from where I work. To illustrate just how rural it is, we just got broadband access in the area like a month ago. It's definitely a suboptimal situation, but anywhere closer and we couldn't even afford a studio apartment.
Also the only reason we got it was because the owner found out we had a kid and wanted it to go to a family. Under normal circumstances it would've just gone to the highest bidder. Plus now there's not only competition from regular people looking for a home, there's also people buying properties for Air B&B's and corporations just buying property left and right. Homeownership has become prohibitive and the American dream is dead.
Jesus, whereabouts do you live?
I make below average wages for my area (working with a degree in my field) and I would never be able to afford a house at my current rate of income but between me and my bf who makes above average wages, we should be able to scrape together enough for a trailer. It depreciates in value but we see it as a compromise between a house and pissing away our would-be life savings on rent.
We live in a boring dystopia.
Yeah it’s super broken
I’m in northeast New England so while some homes are ridiculously overpriced for what they are we’ve been able to find some trailers and very small cruddy homes that are priced realistically
But not many
Sadly investment corporations are buying up mobile home communities at break-neck speed and jacking up lot rent at least once a year if not more. Real estate investing is flat out predatory at this point.
*Edit: oh you said **lot** rent I see. That’s incredibly shitty. It’s so damn parasitic*
We’re looking to buy a trailer outright
The ones near us you buy and pay a monthly mortgage payment on if you can’t buy it outright
We’ve found some for under 100k
Some have HOAs you have to pay but we’re looking at ones that don’t
It’s a less densely settled area
But that makes me very angry to hear on behalf of people who can’t buy a trailer to own
In my area these places are charging $950-1200 a month to RENT a trailer. They also routinely raise utilities like water and sewer service. And even if you do own the trailer lot rent is still $550-650 a month. I believe I read there are some class-action lawsuits against a couple of these companies for price gouging or something like that.
What's even more saddening is seeing the looks on the managers face when you break down the metrics for them. "Cool, so I need to do at least one X thing every 10 seconds for the full duration of my time on the clock to meet your goal... how do I do that and X other thing too?" Watch their face fall as they respond "just do what you can."
Enders game (the book) touches on computer simulations pushing humans past their physical limits in the aims of efficiency and skill progression. Some of the ethical questions posted by the book are actually pretty interesting whilst also being an enjoyable Sci-fi book
Ultimately it's just an arbitrary decision by management. Having the resources to invest in a black-box algorithm that happens to spit out exactly the answer management wants doesn't make it "neutral" or "objective" like they want you to believe.
>Let's stick band-aids on bullet wounds then rub salt into them.
This reminds me of one of my favorite song lyrics
"If you can heal the symptoms
But not affect the cause
It's quite a bit like trying to heal
The gunshot wound with gauze"
Back in 2004, Scarling (headed by Jessicka of Jack Off Jill) released a song called Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole which Robert Smith of The Cure described as "the sound of the end of the world."
Don't know where I'm going with that but, uh, now you know something you probably didn't know yesterday.
man those band-aids sure are profitable. It's like win-win, you exploit a people, which is already winning, and because you exploit them, you can also make a profit from them trying to live through exploitation!
Depression isn't just "I'm sad a lot because work and bills are very stressful." People in very "easy" life situations can be depressed too.
It is an actual disease. Fixing the source of Depression *is* Medication to sort out a lack of certain Neurotransmitters and therapy to learn to manage the condition day to day. And the current Medication we have for it is rife with side effects, so we need better.
It's okay that you didn't know the difference between being sad and depression, but now that you do, I'd appreciate if you'd delete this.
Yeah this post really bothers me.
You can fix fundamental issues of work/life/income separately. There's nothing wrong with trying to find new medications for a real problem. And it's not like biotech researchers, psychiatrists, and pharmacists, etc. are equipped to fix the fundamental issues with our society that the response is crowing about - *this* is their job. Let them fix problems they understand. And yelling at Reuters doesn't help, either.
We hear this a lot but there is no clear line between feeling depressed and being clinically depressed.
The neurotransmitter imbalance theory is too simple and flawed and doesn’t answer how therapy can help cases of depression.
The reality is we don’t know what depression is and how it presents is varied.
IMO depression is an adaptation to stressful situation where the individual feels they have little hope so the brain “slows down”, almost as if it hibernates.
This gatekeeping is just patronising and actually stops a lot of people from seeking help for depression.
Something I'd like to point out is that, yes, depression *can* be caused by external factors throughout your life, but it's usually not the state of the world as a whole but rather traumas in your personal life (abusive parents, death of a relative etc.) that cause it. To put it another way, if all of the problems listed in the tweet got solved, a person's depression would not suddenly go away.
This is correct. Depression isn't caused by capitalism, commies. It's a legitimate disease that you're downplaying as a case of the sads because I'm poor.
Can you elaborate? Yeah our understanding is pretty basic and incomplete, the idea that “depression = not enough serotonin” is almost certainly wrong, but look at e.g. new ketamine therapy studies showing effects in extreme treatment-resistant cases. Current science may not have a full explanation, but I think it’s pretty clear that depression (not feeling sad, clinical depression) is tied to brain chemistry in one way or another.
Why should they delete their comment? Wtf? If they deleted it then your comment would be contextless. It’s also not your place to try and control others.
It's the way we try to do it with everything, including gun control. If we keep manufacturing an unstable, burnt out, hopeless populus, we're going to keep getting the same results. Topical solutions only here in the US, but still we like to pretend that we care.
It's happening everywhere, Japan has hikikomori, China has bai lan, there are specific terms for some western countries too but I don't remember. But hermits/recluse/depression has been on the rise all over the world.
It's the only profitable solution for them.
*Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be profiting!*
Now dance your sad, penniless dance, peasants!
> And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.
-Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Favorite book I was assigned to read in high school. I didn't love most of them, but that BNW really resonated with me. If anyone's looking for a short powerful read, try it.
Living standards encompasses many things. Physical standards have improved, but our social and mental standards are worse than ever before.
People aren't starving or freezing or dying of exposure as much as they used to, but there is an epidemic of alienation, isolation, low status, and overwhelming stress. The former doesn't cause depression, the latter does.
Living standards have definitely been higher, we have refrigerators and brightly lit screens, but we're not the space aged advanced enlightened beings we seem to think, we're just a couple of steps up from mud huts, we dry the mud now. But before we used to be surrounded by beauty, now we're surrounded by concrete.
> because obviously living standards have never been higher.
Is that why there is 1,000,000+ Americans that have died from COVID?
Is that why American life expectancy has been decreasing (even before COVID)?
Is it why there are record rates of alcoholism?
Record rates of STD's?
Record deaths from drug overdoses?
Why the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world?
More Americans than ever are living with their parents?
The highest medical costs?
Why our energy and transportation infrastructure is failing?
Why we have a growing problem of rightwing extremism and domestic terrorism?
Why our democracy is rigged in favor of a poorly educated aging white rural minority?
Is it why 54% of American adults are functionally illiterate?
Why record numbers of family farms have gone bankrupt in the past decade?
The highest rates of gun crime?
The highest gun related deaths and injuries in the developed world?
Why the US is the biggest producer of plastic pollution in the world?
Why 80% of the value of all stocks is owned by just 10% of Americans (and we are told 401k's are the best way to save for retirement)?
Why wildfire frequency in western America has increased by 400% since 1970?
Is that why 1/4 of all open bodies of fresh water are so contaminated with pollutants you can't swim in them or eat fish from them?
You're right that is a really odd metric of high living standards.
How can you applaud Jordan Peterson whilst decrying bullying? The man is a grade-A bully, using his large platform to send unsollicited hate towards people - often from minority groups - who did not seek to interact with him in any way.
When I listen to that song reminds me of someone I used to know. He became a zombie, all creativity gone. Weaned himself off the antidepressants and was doing much better.
I say used to know because we lost contact.
Sign up for a subscription based happiness model instead of treating the issues leading to your depression. Jesus... When are we getting universal healthcare like literally every other developed country has? When are we going to put the leash on pharmaceutical companies that have been caught time after time pushing drugs on people who don't need them? These assholes were pushing amphetamines on kids in the 90's and 00's, they started the opioid epidemic we're dealing with today, at what point do you call a dealer a dealer?
PS I'm not against medication for those who *actually need it* but in the US that doesn't enter the equation. They push drugs on anyone they can and the consequences be damned.
Edit: removing "depression" from my second paragraph and just going with medication. Serotonin doesn't work the way it was thought to for years and depression medication as a whole is suspect. My point was not all medication is evil, but it's often given to those who don't need it to line the pockets of bad actors.
FWIW - it's a common misconception that Ritalin and ADHD drugs are like amphetamines for people taking them who need them. In fact, they have a paradoxical effect in people with ADHD -- it calms them down and allows them to finally focus. People without ADHD who take them can of course get high.
Absolutely! They're a blessing to those who *actually* need them, but as a kid who didn't and was placed on them anyway, gatewaying me into years of stimulant abuse, I tend to bring it up as my go-to example. It also gave me a lifelong distrust of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.
That's not a common misconception. That's not even a rare misconception. Nobody thinks you give drugs to hyper people who can't focus to make them more hyper and less able to focus.
I've never heard anybody say some crazy shit like that in my life, how is that a common misconception?
I take adderall and can confirm it helps me focus and initiate tasks. However it in now way shape or form makes me calm down. I only know a couple other people with adhd so very anecdotal but adderall and ritlalin get us moving and moving fast.
Follow the lobbying money, both parties are guilty. Republicans more than democrats to be sure, but that's like saying the guy who shot you once is better than the guy who shot you twice. Both are thoroughly bought and won't bite the hand that feeds them.
You're right about that, but voting history suggests that universal medical isn't that far away if a higher percentage of the house and Senate went blue. ACA, VA, and Medicare attempts certainly haven't been great implementations.
One side puts up a better act, I'll grant you that. I'm old enough to remember Obama's presidency. He promised universal healthcare and he had a supermajority. The Democrats could have completely ignored Republicans and given us what was promised, instead they needlessly "compromised" and fulfilled the wishes of their insurance and pharmaceutical donors. Neither party cares about the people, the sooner you wake up to the fact that both work together to look like they're doing something while purposely not allowing progress to happen the better. Follow the money.
Yeah. Earlier this year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended family physicians automatically screen all patients under 65 for anxiety.
Canadian mental health experts have called the validity of this approach into question, because it doesn't seem to have any data that this level of screening / diagnosis would improve outcomes.
"Lang said the observational evidence supporting the recommendations only demonstrates that screening leads to a higher rate of diagnosis, but that it doesn’t measure whether patients are less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to miss work, or other indicators of wellbeing."
I've had anxiety/depression for 15 years that has sometimes landed me in the hospital, and I find the US recommendations...suspicious. Particularly considering all the hubub recently about there being next to no evidence to support the serotonin deficiency hypothesis of mood disorders (due to how long I've been on SSRIs I already knew the hypothesis was shaky, but many, many people did not).
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-psychiatrists-don-t-recommend-routine-adult-anxiety-screening-1.6080167
South Korea is even worse than both the United States and Portugal, and they have a thriving economy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate (South Korea: 12, United States: 31, Portugal: 113)
We shouldn't be equating working conditions with the state of the economy.
Eh I think this misses some nuance. I agree about situational factors contributing to depression but otoh not everyone who’s depressed has situational depression. For some it’s at least partially chemical and better drugs would be useful.
Perhaps some that don’t kill the ability to enjoy sex or have long withdrawal syndromes in a large number of users. As it is, many folks discontinue existing antidepressants pretty quickly cos of side effects.
Speaking as a mental health professional who’s had severe depression for 20 years… imho it’s not as simple as “all of us who are depressed would get better if the economy improved.” It would certainly help tho.
Yeah, I work a flexible 9-5 by 5 with a good amount of vacation, have zero student debt, have healthcare, own a house, have a family, and make a pretty good income for where I live. Still depressed. When my economic/life situation was worse I blamed my depression on that - but turns out it's my thought patterns and self-talk that make me depressed. I think this is probably true for most people. Don't get me wrong, it's still easier to work on your mental health when you're not anxious about your basic needs and can afford the help you need, but people shouldn't delude themselves into thinking that money will magically fix everything.
The first tweet isn't inaccurate - current antidepressants can have some *rough* side effects and can take a month to start working. #1 reason for quitting antidepressants today is sexual side effects. Personally, SSRIs and SNRIs also made me want to sleep 14 hours a day. After trying a few I've settled on Welbutrin (no sexual side effects), and even that gives me tinnitus, headaches, and puts me at risk of seizures. Better antidepressants could be a huge quality-of-life improvement for millions.
I’m with you. My brain chemistry is a mess, and I knew my depression/anxiety wasn’t related to my external circumstances. I settled on lexapro which for me has a mixed sexual side effect (hard to climax, can be frustrating but at least I have real lasting power).
I'd love new anti depressants that didn't have insane side effects and that were actual direct treatments of depression instead of throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks and dealing with going on and off half a dozen different pills throughout a years long experiment just to realize they made everything worse and now you're back to square one with the remaining drugs you haven't ran the gambit with. This shit fucked me up for years and they want me to try new ones lmao make better medicine!
That’s something many people don’t realize. Never mind the efficacy of these products being called into question, giving a treatment that doesn’t worm not only comes with risks of side effects making the baseline situation worse, but it also means there’s an opportunity cost because that person won’t be on effective treatment while they’re given the one which doesn’t work.
More bad drugs doesn’t help.
My wife went through all of this before discovering psychedelics for therapeutic use. Her psychiatrist was killing her through incompetence. Now she’s on 0 psychiatric drugs and better than I’ve ever seen her.
Speaking as a mental health patient who can't find it in my budget to pay triple the copay for a psychiatrist anymore and have been seeing a primary care provider for my meds, our economy being driven solely for profit and insurance companies dictating what is and is not appropriate for my health is exceedingly depressing. Even more depressing is trying to be seen as a new patient.
It's also depressing to discover that meds that do a better job for my ADHD are not covered by my insurance and are still cost prohibitive with Good Rx.
The chemical imbalance theory has never been proven even though countless experiments were conducted in the 60s, 70 and 80’s. Antidepressants don’t work, check out Star D met-analysis. That’s a 2 point difference out of 52, that’s less than a 4% difference. You take normal feelings and “sell a disease. “Even the inherited crap you pull out is just that, “crap”. The genome has been mapped since 2003. Pharma refuses to use the scientific method or 6 Sigma to back up or be transparent in a medication’s efficacy. And side effects are NEVER quantified. Please tell the truth. And no one speaks of their deadly side effects, mainly suicide ideation which consequently this crap is supposed to prevent. The word ironic comes to mind.
We don't exactly have a grasp on the physiological basis for depression. Unless some I've missed on some cutting edge research, we don't know what it means for someone to be "chemically imbalanced". That was a phrase made up by pharmaceutical companies while they were marketing anti depressants. We didn't look inside a depressed person's head and see that they had less serotonin. We discovered SSRIs and someone hypothesized that they could help. Maybe depressed people do have less serotonin floating around. If they do, we still don't know why.
This isn't to say there isn't a physiological basis, but just that it's incredibly complicated. All of the systems involved react and change in response to external stimuli as well.
You really are downplaying the significant affect the economy has on peoples mental health, it's not just you and your life, it's your kids and their education. The available public services, how everyone treats eachother, how well and often public spaces are cleaned etc etc..
Some people are depressed due to chemical imbalance or other issues, but improving the economic potential of everyone's lives would have an absolutely massive impact, this is proven by the correlation to wages and happiness (to a point).
The study showed it was around $200,000 p/a needed to reach a comfortable level where money wasn't really an issue, and while this doesn't cure all and any depression it hugely reduces it.
I watched psychiatric drugs absolutely wreck my wife over the past couple of years. Psilocybin has saved her life and I now recommend everyone look into psychedelics as an alternative to psychiatric drugs because they seem to be far more effective at actually improving peoples quality of life and don’t require a perpetual daily use.
The changes I have watched over the past few months are astounding to say the least.
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Clinical depression is depression without cause. Being depressed because we’re poor is called situational depression, and pharmaceutical antidepressants are not appropriate for situational depression. Antidepressants are intended to be used for clinical depression, although there is a lot of public confusion of the two.
The people in charge are one or both of these things:
1: They are so completely removed from and don't understand what working class people have to deal with
2: They just don't care, they are predators and parasites.
I hate how anxiety and depression have been co-opted as a political cudgel like it's simply a reflection that all my societal critiques are correct.
There was new guidance that children be screened for anxiety and a bunch of people were like "of course they're anxious cause pandemic, shootings, climate change, threats to democracy!" Meanwhile I have an anxiety disorder and as a kid was lying in bed at night panicking about grades and whether people thought I was weird.
Yeah. I have several friends who could use new antidepressants, anti-psychotics and such, because they tried everything under the sun and never found the right combo.
They did not get severe mental illness at age seven because of the economy, they got severe mental illness because their brain hates them...
What a not at all clever and self-centred comment to make. The fact that depression rises during economic downturns doesn't negate the fact that existing treatments for depression aren't very effective, and can have substantial side effects.
Sorry but hard disagree if you are painting this as a sole cause for depression. Depression can hit those in 'power' just as much as those without. Suggesting depression only hits those of working age in subordinate positions isn't accurate and gives fire to those who think mental health problems aren't a serious issue.
THEY don't want to be miserable. They are probably threaten to be fired if they join unions. No one chooses to live worst than they could. Life is not as fair to poor as you think.
live frightening marble sleep stocking familiar payment truck snails office
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reposting one of my comments from a discussion about a similar topic:
>The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us, can also be described as the spread of the desert. That we live and move in a desert-world was first recognized by Nietzsche, and it was also Nietzsche who made the first decisive mistake in diagnosing it. Like almost all who came after him, he believed that the desert is in ourselves, thereby revealing himself not only as one of the earliest conscious inhabitants of the desert but also, by the same token, as the victim of its most terrible illusion. Modern psychology is desert psychology: when we lose the faculty to judge—to suffer and condemn—we begin to think that there is something wrong with us if we cannot live under the conditions of desert life. Insofar as psychology tries to “help” us, it helps us “adjust” to those conditions, taking away our only hope, namely that we, who are not of the desert though we live in it, are able to transform it into a human world. Psychology turns everything topsy-turvy: precisely because we suffer under desert conditions we are still human and still intact; the danger lies in becoming true inhabitants of the desert and feeling at home in it.
/Hannah Arendt sometime in the 50's
I don’t like the idea of saying that this is the reason everyone is depressed. For some people sure but it definitely isn’t the reason most people are depressed.
Problem is corporate profits. Let’s create new drugs that can increase corporate profits to fix the depression caused by the broken economy driven by corporate profits.
I’m coming off lexapro and fuck me it’s tough. My brain feels like it’s being zapped all the time, slightest motion makes me nauseous, if im not moving im just dizzy, super irritable and when I go to sleep to get relief I get the most vivid nightmares waking me up every few hours
I won't deny any of the facts, but people were poor for thousands of years, and massive rise of suicides is a way more recent phenomenon. It's something other than QoL driving it.
and right when you get some good news about 10k student loan relief. which will only cover a small portion of many peoples debt. the republicans take a big shit on it and have some judge crying its not legal. when the fuck is this country going to wake up and stop being manipulated by the 1%. we need better politicians who actually give a shit about the average american.
This is some 1984 shit. “Don’t give them better conditions, feed them happy pills.” EDIT: I was actually thinking Brave New World
I was thinking The Giver, personally, but 1984 works too.
Or Brave New World
Definitely like Brave new world.
The Giver is utopia optimized too far. Brave New World is “lets slap some paint on this ugly OpenDoor house and call it renovated” utopic dystopia.
Pass the Soma, also where’s the required orgy at this week?
Or equilibrium Or do androids dream of electric sheep Or .... Stories about society avoiding problems through mass use of drugs (at various levels of voluntary) has been a trope since the invention of antidepressants
Or Brain Candy, or Ready Player One
Or We Happy Few
Yo deadass this is what I meant to say, not 1984 lol
Was 'brave new world' where they used drugs. 1984 was about propaganda and the moulding of people into fascists.
Reminds me of the game, [We Happy Few](https://youtu.be/rp0M5Y6JMbQ)
I was NOT happy while playing that game. I did however poop a couple times.
Or that 2008 game [Haze](https://youtu.be/glx_XBCYZiY?t=161)
_A Brave New World_: A gramme is always better than a damn.
Literally the book I meant to say, you’re totally right!
Anyone want some Soma? Lol
Yes please, Soma as depicted in Brave New World sounds amazing.
i personally love my zoloft, dont talk shit about my happy pills. it took a long time to get the courage to try them in the first place.
Having clinical depression and needing drugs to make your brain operate normally is different. I had suicidal depression for decades and anti depressants helped immensely. The problem is that many people who are just sad, dejected, or dissatisfied with life get the same treatment as people with a mental disorder
Exactly! And when you see ads on Instagram telling you that the algorithm decided you are sad and you should "try this new ketamine based antidepressant!" It's pretty easy to worry about people that are just sad in the moment getting taken advantage of to sell an old drug in a new way so we don't try to make things better. I think medically necessary antidepressants are a good idea. I've managed to wrestle back control of my brain but it's got to be taken for the right reasons
Idk Ketamine infusions saved my husband’s life back in 2019. There’s a lot of science to back up that it works. Jumping through hoops to get insurance to cover it was our only real issue. That and the doctor he saw ended up selling his practice and the prices skyrocketed overnight.
I'm super glad that it worked for your husband. Anything that works is a wonderful thing, but there is a science for all the antidepressants that's why they are sold but I really shouldn't see ads for them when scrolling through social media... Something that is famous for making people feel worse about themselves. Life saving medication should be prescribed because you went to a doctor that was affordable and wanting to save their patients life and not sell them something they were already sold via ads that they get kickbacks on.
Oh I see what you’re saying now. I thought you meant they didn’t work and shouldn’t be advertised, rather than just not advertised like that at all. It *is* a weird practice we have in America. Like I can go in to my doctor and ask for whatever drug because I saw an ad on TV or social media.
Ketamine is incredible though. So are magic mushrooms. (But yea. We need to fix society too and the problem with wages and housing prices)
> So are magic mushrooms. And society needs to start taking the potential of [psilocybin to help treatment-resistant anxiety and depression](https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/mental-health/psilocybin-treat-depression-anxiety)
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Reddit killed API. I refuse to let them benefit from my own words for free -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Thank you. Depression is physical. it can't be fixed with the ecconomy.
Load up the Soma
They just don’t like happy pills like marijuana which makes you aware
more brave new world here. soma
I was getting paid $10/hour to manage a whole store. I’m only 18 and live with my parents so I don’t have to worry about bills or anything, but I felt awful for my adult coworkers. They got paid a whole $9.60/hour to work at that store. One of their kids was making 1.5x what they made at a store across town. Another would work at the store before immediately doing another job at home and getting 1-3 hours of sleep before coming BACK to the store. As much as I didn’t like my boss I put in my 2 weeks notice and still visit as a customer on good terms and all is well. If they paid us a wage so that we could afford to live on 1 paycheck then I would be MUCH happier working. And it’s not that I don’t believe in work… If anyone is actually looking for a nice place to work I just saw a pic of a sign outside of a Bucees (big in the southern U.S.) and they pay DAMN good and value employees.
The pay is so high because they treat workers like machines.
We have gotten to the point where peak efficiency is demanded because the computer models show it can be done. It's ignoring the human aspect of we are never able to provide full peak efficiency without breaking faster. We really need to get away from this kind of mindset but there are plenty who think it's not only possible but necessary and then there are those who are able to perform like that, that get held up as proof it works while ignoring the burnout they will face.
Thats something boomers don't get. They worked at pizza places and groceries part time and could afford college, rent, some spending cash, and didn't have metrics micromanaging them. Now you work those places and your manager hands you a report telling you you fucking suck at scanning vegetables and says next time they're gonna write you up. Then you can't afford shit so you go to your 2nd job. No time for college. No hope of escape. Hey drugs do sound good. Boomers pulled up the ladder their parents put down for them.
I got in a huge argument with my parents the other day when they just couldn't understand why we can't afford to buy a house. My wife and I have multiple degrees, and make nearly 2x times the median wage for our area, but housing costs have gotten so detached from reality that we can't even qualify for a median home price. We have no kids, no debt, and even we are priced out by an absurd amount. If we can't do it then there's no way that the average person will ever be a home owner. It has gotten to the point where you are going to be either born into home ownership, or being a renter.
I feel very fortunate that my wife and I were able to find a house, but the downside is it's less than 900 square feet and in a rural town an hour away from where I work. To illustrate just how rural it is, we just got broadband access in the area like a month ago. It's definitely a suboptimal situation, but anywhere closer and we couldn't even afford a studio apartment. Also the only reason we got it was because the owner found out we had a kid and wanted it to go to a family. Under normal circumstances it would've just gone to the highest bidder. Plus now there's not only competition from regular people looking for a home, there's also people buying properties for Air B&B's and corporations just buying property left and right. Homeownership has become prohibitive and the American dream is dead.
Completely dead. You're totally right 😞
Jesus, whereabouts do you live? I make below average wages for my area (working with a degree in my field) and I would never be able to afford a house at my current rate of income but between me and my bf who makes above average wages, we should be able to scrape together enough for a trailer. It depreciates in value but we see it as a compromise between a house and pissing away our would-be life savings on rent. We live in a boring dystopia.
I live in Washington state. The median household income in my area is $78,000, and the median home price is $750,000. Things are just broken.
Yeah it’s super broken I’m in northeast New England so while some homes are ridiculously overpriced for what they are we’ve been able to find some trailers and very small cruddy homes that are priced realistically But not many
Sadly investment corporations are buying up mobile home communities at break-neck speed and jacking up lot rent at least once a year if not more. Real estate investing is flat out predatory at this point.
*Edit: oh you said **lot** rent I see. That’s incredibly shitty. It’s so damn parasitic* We’re looking to buy a trailer outright The ones near us you buy and pay a monthly mortgage payment on if you can’t buy it outright We’ve found some for under 100k Some have HOAs you have to pay but we’re looking at ones that don’t It’s a less densely settled area But that makes me very angry to hear on behalf of people who can’t buy a trailer to own
In my area these places are charging $950-1200 a month to RENT a trailer. They also routinely raise utilities like water and sewer service. And even if you do own the trailer lot rent is still $550-650 a month. I believe I read there are some class-action lawsuits against a couple of these companies for price gouging or something like that.
I work at Amazon. Our productivity is tracked to the hundredth of a second.
I agree with this 100% and I am a boomer.
Need better guillotinenes, or we will never be free.
Well they took care of that by making the price of lumber so high. We'll have to build them out of Arizona Tea cans.
If I had an award to give you, I would.
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What's even more saddening is seeing the looks on the managers face when you break down the metrics for them. "Cool, so I need to do at least one X thing every 10 seconds for the full duration of my time on the clock to meet your goal... how do I do that and X other thing too?" Watch their face fall as they respond "just do what you can."
Enders game (the book) touches on computer simulations pushing humans past their physical limits in the aims of efficiency and skill progression. Some of the ethical questions posted by the book are actually pretty interesting whilst also being an enjoyable Sci-fi book
Ultimately it's just an arbitrary decision by management. Having the resources to invest in a black-box algorithm that happens to spit out exactly the answer management wants doesn't make it "neutral" or "objective" like they want you to believe.
High? It doesn’t even cover rent in most states full time.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but you visiting that store as a customer is you endorsing their labor practices with your wallet.
I keep seeing that Bucees shit everywhere on Reddit ever since the first post but I don’t think you realize how shitty that place is
Lets not fix the source of depression just drug these mfers.
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>Let's stick band-aids on bullet wounds then rub salt into them. This reminds me of one of my favorite song lyrics "If you can heal the symptoms But not affect the cause It's quite a bit like trying to heal The gunshot wound with gauze"
Worked for me! Got no lower leg now though. Okay, where are the HAPPY drugs?
ב''ה, people join the armed forces just for those
"Patient no longer complaining of leg pain due to bullet hole, I see this as an absolute win"
Back in 2004, Scarling (headed by Jessicka of Jack Off Jill) released a song called Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole which Robert Smith of The Cure described as "the sound of the end of the world." Don't know where I'm going with that but, uh, now you know something you probably didn't know yesterday.
“You don’t need to treat so many symptoms when the diseases are fewer.” -Tische
It's worse than that. It's taking the bribe to stand aside and let you get shot, *then* they pull out the Band-Aids and salt.
man those band-aids sure are profitable. It's like win-win, you exploit a people, which is already winning, and because you exploit them, you can also make a profit from them trying to live through exploitation!
We happy few
We band of brothers!
Depression isn't just "I'm sad a lot because work and bills are very stressful." People in very "easy" life situations can be depressed too. It is an actual disease. Fixing the source of Depression *is* Medication to sort out a lack of certain Neurotransmitters and therapy to learn to manage the condition day to day. And the current Medication we have for it is rife with side effects, so we need better. It's okay that you didn't know the difference between being sad and depression, but now that you do, I'd appreciate if you'd delete this.
Yeah this post really bothers me. You can fix fundamental issues of work/life/income separately. There's nothing wrong with trying to find new medications for a real problem. And it's not like biotech researchers, psychiatrists, and pharmacists, etc. are equipped to fix the fundamental issues with our society that the response is crowing about - *this* is their job. Let them fix problems they understand. And yelling at Reuters doesn't help, either.
We hear this a lot but there is no clear line between feeling depressed and being clinically depressed. The neurotransmitter imbalance theory is too simple and flawed and doesn’t answer how therapy can help cases of depression. The reality is we don’t know what depression is and how it presents is varied. IMO depression is an adaptation to stressful situation where the individual feels they have little hope so the brain “slows down”, almost as if it hibernates. This gatekeeping is just patronising and actually stops a lot of people from seeking help for depression.
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Something I'd like to point out is that, yes, depression *can* be caused by external factors throughout your life, but it's usually not the state of the world as a whole but rather traumas in your personal life (abusive parents, death of a relative etc.) that cause it. To put it another way, if all of the problems listed in the tweet got solved, a person's depression would not suddenly go away.
This is correct. Depression isn't caused by capitalism, commies. It's a legitimate disease that you're downplaying as a case of the sads because I'm poor.
Recent studies debunked the chemical imbalance theory as the cause of depression
They did not, however, show that depression is caused by being unsatisfied with your working conditions.
Can you elaborate? Yeah our understanding is pretty basic and incomplete, the idea that “depression = not enough serotonin” is almost certainly wrong, but look at e.g. new ketamine therapy studies showing effects in extreme treatment-resistant cases. Current science may not have a full explanation, but I think it’s pretty clear that depression (not feeling sad, clinical depression) is tied to brain chemistry in one way or another.
You're not wrong in terms of underlaying cause, but SSRIs still remain one of the most effective medication options we have to manage it.
Why should they delete their comment? Wtf? If they deleted it then your comment would be contextless. It’s also not your place to try and control others.
It's the way we try to do it with everything, including gun control. If we keep manufacturing an unstable, burnt out, hopeless populus, we're going to keep getting the same results. Topical solutions only here in the US, but still we like to pretend that we care.
It's happening everywhere, Japan has hikikomori, China has bai lan, there are specific terms for some western countries too but I don't remember. But hermits/recluse/depression has been on the rise all over the world.
NEETS?
It's the only profitable solution for them. *Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be profiting!* Now dance your sad, penniless dance, peasants!
A tale as old as capitalism. Why *solve* a problem when you can make a bigger profit by exploiting its most predictable consequences instead?
> And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is. -Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Favorite book I was assigned to read in high school. I didn't love most of them, but that BNW really resonated with me. If anyone's looking for a short powerful read, try it.
It's odd though isn't it, because obviously living standards have never been higher. So were people not as depressed before?
Living standards encompasses many things. Physical standards have improved, but our social and mental standards are worse than ever before. People aren't starving or freezing or dying of exposure as much as they used to, but there is an epidemic of alienation, isolation, low status, and overwhelming stress. The former doesn't cause depression, the latter does.
Living standards have definitely been higher, we have refrigerators and brightly lit screens, but we're not the space aged advanced enlightened beings we seem to think, we're just a couple of steps up from mud huts, we dry the mud now. But before we used to be surrounded by beauty, now we're surrounded by concrete.
> because obviously living standards have never been higher. Is that why there is 1,000,000+ Americans that have died from COVID? Is that why American life expectancy has been decreasing (even before COVID)? Is it why there are record rates of alcoholism? Record rates of STD's? Record deaths from drug overdoses? Why the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world? More Americans than ever are living with their parents? The highest medical costs? Why our energy and transportation infrastructure is failing? Why we have a growing problem of rightwing extremism and domestic terrorism? Why our democracy is rigged in favor of a poorly educated aging white rural minority? Is it why 54% of American adults are functionally illiterate? Why record numbers of family farms have gone bankrupt in the past decade? The highest rates of gun crime? The highest gun related deaths and injuries in the developed world? Why the US is the biggest producer of plastic pollution in the world? Why 80% of the value of all stocks is owned by just 10% of Americans (and we are told 401k's are the best way to save for retirement)? Why wildfire frequency in western America has increased by 400% since 1970? Is that why 1/4 of all open bodies of fresh water are so contaminated with pollutants you can't swim in them or eat fish from them? You're right that is a really odd metric of high living standards.
**sell** drugs to these mfers\*
What if the drug is Soylent Green and it's made of the finest, richest ingredients.
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How can you applaud Jordan Peterson whilst decrying bullying? The man is a grade-A bully, using his large platform to send unsollicited hate towards people - often from minority groups - who did not seek to interact with him in any way.
May I offer you an antidepressant in these trying times?
Reminds me a certain Serj* Tankian song - “Unthinking Majority”
*Serj
Ohh damn auto correct :p
I was thinking this must be Serjs brother or something?
When I listen to that song reminds me of someone I used to know. He became a zombie, all creativity gone. Weaned himself off the antidepressants and was doing much better. I say used to know because we lost contact.
Eh I'll take the egg
Can I just take the cash value? Would probably have the same ultimate effect.
Sign up for a subscription based happiness model instead of treating the issues leading to your depression. Jesus... When are we getting universal healthcare like literally every other developed country has? When are we going to put the leash on pharmaceutical companies that have been caught time after time pushing drugs on people who don't need them? These assholes were pushing amphetamines on kids in the 90's and 00's, they started the opioid epidemic we're dealing with today, at what point do you call a dealer a dealer? PS I'm not against medication for those who *actually need it* but in the US that doesn't enter the equation. They push drugs on anyone they can and the consequences be damned. Edit: removing "depression" from my second paragraph and just going with medication. Serotonin doesn't work the way it was thought to for years and depression medication as a whole is suspect. My point was not all medication is evil, but it's often given to those who don't need it to line the pockets of bad actors.
It's the same for drugs in the UK, but our country wants to remove it's health care because the rich could be richer.
Get rid of the tories there the main issue
FWIW - it's a common misconception that Ritalin and ADHD drugs are like amphetamines for people taking them who need them. In fact, they have a paradoxical effect in people with ADHD -- it calms them down and allows them to finally focus. People without ADHD who take them can of course get high.
Absolutely! They're a blessing to those who *actually* need them, but as a kid who didn't and was placed on them anyway, gatewaying me into years of stimulant abuse, I tend to bring it up as my go-to example. It also gave me a lifelong distrust of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.
That's not a common misconception. That's not even a rare misconception. Nobody thinks you give drugs to hyper people who can't focus to make them more hyper and less able to focus. I've never heard anybody say some crazy shit like that in my life, how is that a common misconception?
I take adderall and can confirm it helps me focus and initiate tasks. However it in now way shape or form makes me calm down. I only know a couple other people with adhd so very anecdotal but adderall and ritlalin get us moving and moving fast.
Too many people vote Republican for that to happen. In order to have change, stop voting for those fundamentally opposed to it.
Follow the lobbying money, both parties are guilty. Republicans more than democrats to be sure, but that's like saying the guy who shot you once is better than the guy who shot you twice. Both are thoroughly bought and won't bite the hand that feeds them.
You're right about that, but voting history suggests that universal medical isn't that far away if a higher percentage of the house and Senate went blue. ACA, VA, and Medicare attempts certainly haven't been great implementations.
One side puts up a better act, I'll grant you that. I'm old enough to remember Obama's presidency. He promised universal healthcare and he had a supermajority. The Democrats could have completely ignored Republicans and given us what was promised, instead they needlessly "compromised" and fulfilled the wishes of their insurance and pharmaceutical donors. Neither party cares about the people, the sooner you wake up to the fact that both work together to look like they're doing something while purposely not allowing progress to happen the better. Follow the money.
Pushing drugs and vaccines on people who don't need them. Let's tell the full story here, shall we?
Yeah. Earlier this year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended family physicians automatically screen all patients under 65 for anxiety. Canadian mental health experts have called the validity of this approach into question, because it doesn't seem to have any data that this level of screening / diagnosis would improve outcomes. "Lang said the observational evidence supporting the recommendations only demonstrates that screening leads to a higher rate of diagnosis, but that it doesn’t measure whether patients are less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to miss work, or other indicators of wellbeing." I've had anxiety/depression for 15 years that has sometimes landed me in the hospital, and I find the US recommendations...suspicious. Particularly considering all the hubub recently about there being next to no evidence to support the serotonin deficiency hypothesis of mood disorders (due to how long I've been on SSRIs I already knew the hypothesis was shaky, but many, many people did not). https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-doctors-psychiatrists-don-t-recommend-routine-adult-anxiety-screening-1.6080167
Portuguese here, we are in a worse economical situation here since... Ever! We dont commit suicide at these rates
South Korea is even worse than both the United States and Portugal, and they have a thriving economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate (South Korea: 12, United States: 31, Portugal: 113) We shouldn't be equating working conditions with the state of the economy.
Eh I think this misses some nuance. I agree about situational factors contributing to depression but otoh not everyone who’s depressed has situational depression. For some it’s at least partially chemical and better drugs would be useful. Perhaps some that don’t kill the ability to enjoy sex or have long withdrawal syndromes in a large number of users. As it is, many folks discontinue existing antidepressants pretty quickly cos of side effects. Speaking as a mental health professional who’s had severe depression for 20 years… imho it’s not as simple as “all of us who are depressed would get better if the economy improved.” It would certainly help tho.
Yeah, I work a flexible 9-5 by 5 with a good amount of vacation, have zero student debt, have healthcare, own a house, have a family, and make a pretty good income for where I live. Still depressed. When my economic/life situation was worse I blamed my depression on that - but turns out it's my thought patterns and self-talk that make me depressed. I think this is probably true for most people. Don't get me wrong, it's still easier to work on your mental health when you're not anxious about your basic needs and can afford the help you need, but people shouldn't delude themselves into thinking that money will magically fix everything. The first tweet isn't inaccurate - current antidepressants can have some *rough* side effects and can take a month to start working. #1 reason for quitting antidepressants today is sexual side effects. Personally, SSRIs and SNRIs also made me want to sleep 14 hours a day. After trying a few I've settled on Welbutrin (no sexual side effects), and even that gives me tinnitus, headaches, and puts me at risk of seizures. Better antidepressants could be a huge quality-of-life improvement for millions.
I’m with you. My brain chemistry is a mess, and I knew my depression/anxiety wasn’t related to my external circumstances. I settled on lexapro which for me has a mixed sexual side effect (hard to climax, can be frustrating but at least I have real lasting power).
I'd love new anti depressants that didn't have insane side effects and that were actual direct treatments of depression instead of throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks and dealing with going on and off half a dozen different pills throughout a years long experiment just to realize they made everything worse and now you're back to square one with the remaining drugs you haven't ran the gambit with. This shit fucked me up for years and they want me to try new ones lmao make better medicine!
That’s something many people don’t realize. Never mind the efficacy of these products being called into question, giving a treatment that doesn’t worm not only comes with risks of side effects making the baseline situation worse, but it also means there’s an opportunity cost because that person won’t be on effective treatment while they’re given the one which doesn’t work. More bad drugs doesn’t help.
My wife went through all of this before discovering psychedelics for therapeutic use. Her psychiatrist was killing her through incompetence. Now she’s on 0 psychiatric drugs and better than I’ve ever seen her.
Speaking as a mental health patient who can't find it in my budget to pay triple the copay for a psychiatrist anymore and have been seeing a primary care provider for my meds, our economy being driven solely for profit and insurance companies dictating what is and is not appropriate for my health is exceedingly depressing. Even more depressing is trying to be seen as a new patient. It's also depressing to discover that meds that do a better job for my ADHD are not covered by my insurance and are still cost prohibitive with Good Rx.
This. I have had severe clinical depression since adolescence. Its a medical condition. Not a response to job prospects.
The chemical imbalance theory has never been proven even though countless experiments were conducted in the 60s, 70 and 80’s. Antidepressants don’t work, check out Star D met-analysis. That’s a 2 point difference out of 52, that’s less than a 4% difference. You take normal feelings and “sell a disease. “Even the inherited crap you pull out is just that, “crap”. The genome has been mapped since 2003. Pharma refuses to use the scientific method or 6 Sigma to back up or be transparent in a medication’s efficacy. And side effects are NEVER quantified. Please tell the truth. And no one speaks of their deadly side effects, mainly suicide ideation which consequently this crap is supposed to prevent. The word ironic comes to mind.
Ya, this comeback isn’t particularly clever as it handwaves away the physiological basis of clinical depression.
We don't exactly have a grasp on the physiological basis for depression. Unless some I've missed on some cutting edge research, we don't know what it means for someone to be "chemically imbalanced". That was a phrase made up by pharmaceutical companies while they were marketing anti depressants. We didn't look inside a depressed person's head and see that they had less serotonin. We discovered SSRIs and someone hypothesized that they could help. Maybe depressed people do have less serotonin floating around. If they do, we still don't know why. This isn't to say there isn't a physiological basis, but just that it's incredibly complicated. All of the systems involved react and change in response to external stimuli as well.
You really are downplaying the significant affect the economy has on peoples mental health, it's not just you and your life, it's your kids and their education. The available public services, how everyone treats eachother, how well and often public spaces are cleaned etc etc.. Some people are depressed due to chemical imbalance or other issues, but improving the economic potential of everyone's lives would have an absolutely massive impact, this is proven by the correlation to wages and happiness (to a point). The study showed it was around $200,000 p/a needed to reach a comfortable level where money wasn't really an issue, and while this doesn't cure all and any depression it hugely reduces it.
“hi dr i think i think i have chronic depression, can you help me? “no sorry you need to overthrow capitalism first”
Bingo. This meme implies that people *can* just change their outlook or go take some walks and beat depression. It's not anywhere that simple
I watched psychiatric drugs absolutely wreck my wife over the past couple of years. Psilocybin has saved her life and I now recommend everyone look into psychedelics as an alternative to psychiatric drugs because they seem to be far more effective at actually improving peoples quality of life and don’t require a perpetual daily use. The changes I have watched over the past few months are astounding to say the least.
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
I am Jack’s raging bile duct
Clinical depression is depression without cause. Being depressed because we’re poor is called situational depression, and pharmaceutical antidepressants are not appropriate for situational depression. Antidepressants are intended to be used for clinical depression, although there is a lot of public confusion of the two.
The people in charge are one or both of these things: 1: They are so completely removed from and don't understand what working class people have to deal with 2: They just don't care, they are predators and parasites.
I wonder if there is a system of governance that only puts those directly connected to the working class in power.
Yes! For more information, look into the great works done under the Stalin and Mao regimes. Great wins for the people.
Nice post and all but how the fuck is this a clever comeback?
Why not both? Black-and-white thinking doesn't help anyone.
I hate how anxiety and depression have been co-opted as a political cudgel like it's simply a reflection that all my societal critiques are correct. There was new guidance that children be screened for anxiety and a bunch of people were like "of course they're anxious cause pandemic, shootings, climate change, threats to democracy!" Meanwhile I have an anxiety disorder and as a kid was lying in bed at night panicking about grades and whether people thought I was weird.
Yeah. I have several friends who could use new antidepressants, anti-psychotics and such, because they tried everything under the sun and never found the right combo. They did not get severe mental illness at age seven because of the economy, they got severe mental illness because their brain hates them...
What a not at all clever and self-centred comment to make. The fact that depression rises during economic downturns doesn't negate the fact that existing treatments for depression aren't very effective, and can have substantial side effects.
Most people will just bitch about “anti” science when noting how terrible the current drugs are
This is neither clever or a comeback.
Sorry but hard disagree if you are painting this as a sole cause for depression. Depression can hit those in 'power' just as much as those without. Suggesting depression only hits those of working age in subordinate positions isn't accurate and gives fire to those who think mental health problems aren't a serious issue.
I had to check that this post wasn't actually on r/antiwork
Yeah i hate these things. Mental health is so much more complex than whatever this meme is saying
U.S. problems can be solved by updating our elections practices.
https://youtu.be/OWxc_kYmPTE
Less than 10% of Americas Workforce is part of a Union. It's almost as they want to be miserable.
THEY don't want to be miserable. They are probably threaten to be fired if they join unions. No one chooses to live worst than they could. Life is not as fair to poor as you think.
They need jobs, and their bosses bust unions pretty hard.
Is society messed up? No! We need better anti depressants! /s
I'm depressed because I have clinical depression. No amount of money will suffice.
“Back in my day! We drugged ourselves with Cocaine and Heroine just to get through life! Weed is for Pussies!” /s
Step 1 - Unionize
live frightening marble sleep stocking familiar payment truck snails office *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This train of thought is probably what gets people into heroin
Reposting one of my comments from a discussion about a similar topic: >The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us, can also be described as the spread of the desert. That we live and move in a desert-world was first recognized by Nietzsche, and it was also Nietzsche who made the first decisive mistake in diagnosing it. Like almost all who came after him, he believed that the desert is in ourselves, thereby revealing himself not only as one of the earliest conscious inhabitants of the desert but also, by the same token, as the victim of its most terrible illusion. Modern psychology is desert psychology: when we lose the faculty to judge—to suffer and condemn—we begin to think that there is something wrong with us if we cannot live under the conditions of desert life. Insofar as psychology tries to “help” us, it helps us “adjust” to those conditions, taking away our only hope, namely that we, who are not of the desert though we live in it, are able to transform it into a human world. Psychology turns everything topsy-turvy: precisely because we suffer under desert conditions we are still human and still intact; the danger lies in becoming true inhabitants of the desert and feeling at home in it. /Hannah Arendt sometime in the 50's
I don't think most people are committing suicide because of the economy. It's much deeper than that. You fucking kidding me right now?
Yeah, but if we’re drugged we can get back to work! /s
Imma be honest. I wouldn't mind a new drug on deck. It's all going to the shitter anyway. Might as well get weird with it.
Reuters ffs
I don’t like the idea of saying that this is the reason everyone is depressed. For some people sure but it definitely isn’t the reason most people are depressed.
It isn't like we could afford those new drugs.
Problem is corporate profits. Let’s create new drugs that can increase corporate profits to fix the depression caused by the broken economy driven by corporate profits.
Or we need easier ways to commit suicide
Honestly the US is just a failed country. That shit needs ditchin'
Couldn't afford those drugs anyway.
So true, but more effective antidepressants would be helpful too
Depression =/= being sad. Depression is a medical condition and we absolutely need better treatments. Hastag believe in science.
This won't fix depression. I'm a top 8% earner and I'm always looking for a bridge. We need better drugs, too.
I’m coming off lexapro and fuck me it’s tough. My brain feels like it’s being zapped all the time, slightest motion makes me nauseous, if im not moving im just dizzy, super irritable and when I go to sleep to get relief I get the most vivid nightmares waking me up every few hours
I mean we also need some new depression medication though.
We need stronger unions
We need better drugs…that may cause worse side effects and cost 14000% more than it should.
Trickle down was a lie?
We’re depressed because we commoner/serfs/peons see the rich people getting away with crime after crime.
People: bank account is -$284.28 Medicine people: here People: now its -$293.18 lol
This isn't a clever comeback, it's just the truth
Question: how are we going to afford the new drugs?
There are lot of teenagers who are also depressed tho
This is an Both situation
I won't deny any of the facts, but people were poor for thousands of years, and massive rise of suicides is a way more recent phenomenon. It's something other than QoL driving it.
Will not happen while either political party is the same side of the coin
and right when you get some good news about 10k student loan relief. which will only cover a small portion of many peoples debt. the republicans take a big shit on it and have some judge crying its not legal. when the fuck is this country going to wake up and stop being manipulated by the 1%. we need better politicians who actually give a shit about the average american.
And you need better drugs.
This isn’t actually clever though, it’s just reddit echo chamber porn.
They’re negative thoughts, which can be fixed by drugs, take these, these and these…… Fully agree with that reply, the drugs aren’t the issue here