Friend with Depression, help!

[Helm]

Being "depressed" and "clinically depressed" are in my view the same thing, but the other is on a more extreme end of the spectrum.

That may be so, but some people are depressed like they're tall. Meaning, they're like that for no particular reason other than genetics, and they've been like that a long time and don't know any other way to be. It doesn't always have to be with losing something or someone.

[SSH]

I wonder if there are any advice services in the UK for people who have friends (or relatives) they genuinely feel they have untreated mental health problems. I know someone who I think has a untreated (or rather, badly treated) problem and I would be interested to know if there was some professional advice available. Much as I'm sure some of you guy's advice is good, the trouble is telling whose!

[scotch]

There are places to speak to for advice (I don't know of a general one for all mental illness though). Unfortunately there's not a lot they can tell you though, except reassuring you with the recommended approach to deal with someone with a aprticular problem. Ultimately people have to take action for themselves, unless it gets to the point they're a danger to someone. We have to wait until my Dad causes some serious problems for people before we can see about getting him sectioned, even though it happens like every year.

[biothlebop]

That may be so, but some people are depressed like they're tall. Meaning, they're like that for no particular reason other than genetics, and they've been like that a long time and don't know any other way to be. It doesn't always have to be with losing something or someone.

Sorry, that statement of mine came out a little unresearched (didn't check the definition of clinical depression and lazily associated it with just a more severe depression after reading Miez' post).
Also, my experiences with depression are mostly concerned with people that have at least appeared normal and happy at times, and I don't think I have ever met a person that would have been their entire existence in a stable, constant state of mind.

I do however imagine there is a possibility that a person's depression and mood can be purely the result of genetic factors and unaffected by external/enviromental factors/a change of circumstances.

I think we all have some sort of genetic predispositions, but that our intellect makes us somewhat flexible/adaptive and therefore able to stretch the limits set by our genes in order to adapt to the environment.
I'd imagine that even most of those people that have a predisposition for depression can still either wallow in it, try to get by or strive for happiness, just like a tall person can make an effort to shop in a tall-folks' store or walk naked and blame the shops that sell small clothes in his/her neighborhood. What this person does then, how much willpower they have can also be seen as a genetic predisposition, but I imagine that there still is the choice to fight or give in to the flow. External situations might have changed to more favorable by the point that a person has tired, spent all of his/her willpower.

So although I understand what you mean, I see length as more set in stone than mood/mental predisposition.

[Helm]

I am sorry, I don't believe in/understand free will. Whatever you do is all you could have done, I don't see the point in telling someone 'try harder to be happy'.

[biothlebop]

It might be that it will eventually present itself as a redundant/imaginary concept for me as well (I haven't yet been able to find it's source/essence through reasoning and I guess it relies on a "feeling in my gut" for the most part).
Though this same thing applies in much of my thinking since I still feel closer to agnosticism and do not find philosophical materialism preferable to any other ontology. I am not certain there exists a objective physical reality, independent of observers, I do not really know if I exist.

I find imaginary constructs/beliefs useful, I am currently happy with believing in "free will" which is probably the best reason or explanation I can give.
I don't really value consistency and reason over everything, I guess adaptation is my highest value, adapting my beliefs to survive, to get the most out of my presumed existence.

Although, I am intrigued how you feel about not believing/understanding it.
Does it bother you that you believe that it does not exist? Are you better off without it? In that case, I might try it myself, take my reasoning a little further, peel off some beliefs I hold on to.

[Helm]

I guess this should probably be a PM instead, but since you asked.

Well when I first experienced that the very foundation of human action in many ways, which we have so easily presupposed to be willpower, is meaningless... it sort of shortcircuited me (especially since at the time I was on a very willpower-aescetic path), but now I'm fine, a reasonably happy guy, going about doing things that please me.  Given to an expected amount of ups and downs, I feel.

As with every philosophical baggage we carry that cannot be proven (not that anything can be reliably proven as with the problems with epistemology, but not even depended on in this case), I am for coming to terms with this realization: there are many, many other reasons we use free will other than it being a true supposition. As you say, if it's useful to you, go for it. Can you be happy without it? I think so. How do you abandon it? it's not just coming to terms with the words of it, it's experiencing it. I've been around free-will discussions for as long as I've been on the internet, and my position was always that it exists. No amount of talk, even reasonable talk, about determinism could shake that 'feeling in my gut'. It was only when certain experiences occured that this belief was shattered inside me, gone like it never was there. There was a period of readjustment, a lot of philosophical shedding of skin, and then here I was. On the outside not much has changed (beside my return to a lot of things I had cut off).

Most of the things we say every day to each other are unfounded lies that serve many many different things than the persuit for truth. They're about feeling better, extinguishing social anxiety, about coming out on top or playing an angle, all about personal survival, that occur deep within your mechanism, uninfluenced by 'you'. We are automations that use words as the debugger of our internal machine code. Machine code which will make as much sense to us if we could look at it directly as it makes sense to you when you read

01011001011011110111010100100000011001000110111101101110
00100111011101000010000001110010011001010110000101101100
0110110001111001001000000110010101111000011010010111001101110100

The debugger loops back data and realization and it self-influences, upgrades, evolves, but it's all internal code that the small pathetic part of it which we call 'self-awareness' is both oblivious to and better off being. Words aren't meaningless. They're meaninful inside in a place where we can't look with our microscopic eye, and even if we could all we would see would be unfathomable oceans of data where every part influences every other part in such complex interfacing structure.

The belief of oneself existence is similar to the belief in free will, in that it really means nothing concrete and can be similarly removed, and would also have very little to no effect in every-day life just as long as you kept communicating for all these other reasons besides 'truth'. True solipsism is just going about saying things, but not believing anything. More people are solipsists than those that know what the word means. Philosophy is useless as persuit of truth.


I don't think putting pressure on sick people using a lie such as free will helps them at all though. It's no longer fun and games. When you are late for a date and your date tells you "please don't do that again", and you say 'I will do my best', though you know you're not in such fine control of your intention, that's fun and games. When one is constently feeling awful about themselves and can't stop crying and all that, and you tell them 'try to be more happy!' then you're a jackass.

People who go through psychotherapy are often put through analysis by doctors. This  analysis gives them the space to communicate with themselves (not with their analyst) and arrive in certain personal reflections that help them be happy. The analyst tries to cut from these reflections, away those that could be feeding neuroses. Like, a depressed person would temporarily arrive to feeling better by self-reflecting "If I just can control EVERY ASPECT OF MY LIFE, I will be happy again!" This could lead to a period of happiness as the lie works and the person survives. However it can lead to control neuroses and such, and the work of the doctor is to hear what you say and steer you towards a comfortable lie which will work for you. This is not bad. I don't believe in anything that is true either. I am happy. I hope other people can be happy too, if it takes lies, so be it. The deal is trying to achieve an amount of lie-baggage that is not overbearing, and that which helps you socialize and carry on the stuff that will keep you reasonably happy.

Sometimes analysis is not enough - because it deals with a very non-scientific (analysts are not scientists) process: it messes with the debugger. It's trying to influence what the debugger sends back into the program for alteration. This is a very personal procedure that will never be totally codified. Then people try medication. Medication does a few things to your body that we know, and a lot that we do not. In comparison to analysis, it's a brute-force approach. Instead of fixing you from the bebugger, slowly ever so slowly making you feed back the data to your system so now you're over the problem, the drugs just alter your biochemistry themselves, sending 'I feel happy' dopamine, endorphine, whatever else you need. These may not fix the psychological fixation issue, but may provide a good groundwork for the debugger to start considering the options that will lead to long-term recovery. In any case, there is no medication without combined analysis, but there is analysis without medication. It's all up to what the severity of the symptoms are.

Most people on depression meds will continue to take depression meds for the rest of their lives. But that's not so bad either, if the only sideeffect is that constant need of them.

[DGMacphee]

There are two things that Helm said that stuck with me.

Most of the things we say every day to each other are unfounded lies that serve many many different things than the persuit for truth. They're about feeling better, extinguishing social anxiety, about coming out on top or playing an angle, all about personal survival, that occur deep within your mechanism, uninfluenced by 'you'.

Agreed. For example, I've found a lot of the time people compliment others to make them feel better. Really this has no effect whatsoever. I believe praise should only be given to people who have made an effort to do better.

Although this discussion is getting into a bit of a predeterminalism/free will debate, I'll just say I do believe that people have choice, but I think with depressed people (and I speak from my own experience and from interacting with others) have trouble seeing their choices.

I do think it's helpful for some to highlight options for depressed people when they need advice, like someone visiting a therapist. But ultimately, yes, you can't just say, "Try and be happy" because it essentially acts as a mask for the problem without actually rectifying it to any degree.

I don't think putting pressure on sick people using a lie such as free will helps them at all though. It's no longer fun and games. When you are late for a date and your date tells you "please don't do that again", and you say 'I will do my best', though you know you're not in such fine control of your intention, that's fun and games. When one is constently feeling awful about themselves and can't stop crying and all that, and you tell them 'try to be more happy!' then you're a jackass.

Agreed also. Saying "Try to be more happy!" puts an expectation on a person that they MUST... BE... HAPPY... Like I said, I think a depressed person must put in a certain degree of effort to actually rectify the problem, such as understanding their self, communicating with others (or in some cases, learning to better communicate with others), choose certain steps to rectify the problem.

And especially with chemical inblances. If I remember correctly, Yufster's friend has been perscribed medication that he should be taking. If he's choosing not to take this medication, okay, fine, his choice. But as Yufster mentions it's seriously affecting his personal health and relationships with others.

"Try to be more happy!" does diddly-squat, and in some cases has a negative impact.