Not sure if anyone pointed this out here before, but asking for a participant's gender in a questionnaire before any of the questions are actually asked skews the results. It's got to do with stereotype threat and is scientifically proven.
Big changes are in general a bad idea when it comes to people struggling with clinical depression. Developing a healthy daily rhythm (sleep, food, exercise), dropping drugs and limiting alcohol intake are the first lifestyle changes a depressed person should make.
And don't forget depression is an illness. Medical help is a must. There's no healing without medical help.
Dogs require taking care of. For someone who is clinically depressed and has huge problems with properly taking care of themselves, taking care of someone else might be extremely exhausting. It can also lead to blaming oneself for not treating the dog properly, regardless of how it's treated. Trust me, I've seen this in people with clinical depression.
Pets can go both ways. I've been in depressed states where my pets were the only thing keeping me going. I didn't want to live any more, but who would take care of my pets? I had to force myself to function so that the pets didn't starve or live in their own feces. That constant, gentle kick in the ass was what I needed a lot of the time.
Like you say, it can unfortunately cut the other way as well. Dogs are an especially high-risk proposition because they are a big time and money commitment, and if a person is feeling overwhelmed already... that could be trouble.
Possible compromise: volunteer at an animal shelter?
> That's how the hit of LSD or psilocybin (mushrooms) might help, but you need to know what and how you're doing it.
I figured out your LSD therapy was a form of self-help, but as someone who is under constant, long-term care of a psychiatrist, I have been told more than once that in the case of depression drugs and habitual alcohol intake are a no-go. LSD is especially dangerous. Please don't advise suicidal and mentally ill people to solve their problems with drugs.
And finally, depressed people don't need advice, they need patience, understanding and someone who is able to listen to them.
Magic mushrooms' psychedelic ingredient could help treat people with severe depression
Drugs derived from magic mushrooms could help treat people with severe depression. Scientists believe the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, can turn down parts of the brain that are overactive in severely depressive patients. The drug appears to stop patients dwelling on themselves and their own perceived inadequacies.
However, a bid by British scientists to carry out trials of psilocybin on patients in order to assess its full medical potential has been blocked by red tape relating to Britain's strict drugs laws. Professor David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, will tell a conference today that because magic mushrooms are rated as a class-A drug, their active chemical ingredient cannot be manufactured unless a special licence is granted.
"We haven't started the study because finding companies that could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence is proving very difficult," said Nutt. "The whole field is so bedevilled by primitive old-fashioned attitudes. Even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic, it seems."
Your psychiatrist might be uninformed or maybe what he means is not to indulge in drugs as a way to escape reality (which I agree with).
Psychedelics, when taken in a safe setting and with the right goals (eg. as a therapy aid, not recreationally) can be extremely efficient for treating depression and all sorts of emotional issues.
As as a side note, consider that psychiatrists are not gods and they know what they learned.
In fact, I bet it would be detrimental for the whole industry if you could treat your mental issues in one or two settings and not use expensive psychiatric drugs for years.
> Your psychiatrist might be uninformed or maybe what he means
I think I am able to judge the competence of the doctor I am using, and, as their patient, determine the value their opinion better than a person on HN that happens to read a lot on the Internet and quotes an article with gaps in logic and no scientific proof that mushrooms actually help cure mental illness in people.
> In fact, I bet it would be detrimental for the whole industry if you could treat your mental issues in one or two settings and not use expensive psychiatric drugs for years.
Yeah, I bet it's the same with diabetes and cancer.
Unless you have anything to actually prove that Shanley, Ashe, whomever else you named in this thread, are "making the whole things worse", please be so kind and keep your hate to yourself.
PS. The only thing the tweets you quoted prove is that Shanley, on top of everything, has a sense of humor.
rvm (an open source tool for managing your Ruby environment) had a crowd-funding campaign: https://www.bountysource.com/teams/rvm/fundraiser
They collected all the cash they needed, the maintainer took a break for some time, and now they're working on the next major release.
The deathcamps came long before the war, in Germany's colonies in Africa.