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How To Talk About Mental Illness Online?
An anonymous reader writes: Shortly after the death of Debian founder Ian Murdock, Bruce Perens, who succeeded Murdock as Debian Project Leader in 1996 and was also Murdock's employer for a period of time, claimed very publicly that Murdock died of mental illness, although no evidence has been provided. Without referencing Murdock or Perens, another prominent Debian Developer, Daniel Pocock, has asserted that discussion about who has or had a mental illness is a step too far. To be fair, it sure doesn't sound like Perens was trying to do other than express sympathy in light of a tragic death.
If you want to keep mental illness stigmatized, insist it be kept a secret.
If I die of cancer, I won't have a problem with anybody talking about that. Same with a heart attack. Same with a mental illness.
A brain dysfunction can cause the affected quite a bit of suffering, but sympathy doesn't mean lying. There's no moral failing associated with, say, a neurotransmitter imbalance. These aren't attributed to demons in 2016 - we can see them on PET or fMRI. They're just as valid a medical problem as a broken arm, even if the science of treatment is still in its adolescence.
Now, people who belittle those with mental illness - they should be ostracized. It no better than taunting somebody who gets cancer.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
... it was aired long before this suicide, but provides lots of insight on why the situation is as it is: Episode on Youtube.
The first step requires a significant cultural change, which is always difficult. We collectively need to stop considering mental illness as a failure of character, a visitation by some imaginary deity/demon, or any of the other cruelly fallacious delusions out there. Truth is, the mind is extremely complex, very poorly understood, and probably never quite 'right' in the sense we would want it to be. In other words, we are all nucking futs and we had better learn to be more kind to each other.
After that first step, we most definitely should start talking, openly and kindly, about mental health online and in-person and in all social constructs.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
We should always reject and ignore demands/requests for consideration or special treatment of some topics in discussions that take in the general public. Maybe in the workplace it'd be good to avoid some topics, likewise at some special events, but otherwise talk and joke about whatever you want, and if someone must be ostracised it should be those trying to fence topics off rather than those who ignore the fences.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
It's a very big part of the American culture thing to need to fix everyone else.
This can be a very good thing, and I respect Bruce Perens for "daring" to "go there."
Donald Trump, in his own bombastic style also likes to point out broken things, but
he's less interested in fixing them and more interested in pointing out how he's not
broken. [ob mental illness the Donald is clearly a case of NPD waiting for diagnosis].
Bruce did the right thing because he brought a discussion to the forefront... and sure
enough here we are on Slashdot talking about it.
- Should a mental illness be treated any differently than Lamar Odom's condition... or
Patrick Swayze... or Steve Jobs... or... anyone who has a physical ailment? I don't
think so. They are all people and whether they suffer from a diseased liver, a drug
overdose, or a mental demon, they deserve our [something- is it attention, respect,
space, support, leave-them-alone-ingness, or even just a nod of the head saying
you're not going through this alone].
- Should we NOT discuss it, are we not then perpetuating the de-facto stigma that
mental illness is so bad we can't even talk about it... let alone offer help... or just
say we're there for that person.
I did not know the man himself but I respect greatly the contributions he made to my
daily life. (I use Mint Linux and Ubuntu, both of which are Debian variants).
My thought - there are lots of mentally diseased people running for office right now,
but Ian is no longer here.
May his soul rest in piece... and may a dialogue help others in similar situations.
Thanks, Bruce Perens.
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
I'm mentally ill and don't give a fuck. Thanks to socialism they'll take care of me on their dime and I get all the free meds and support I want.
It's fine to make that decision about *your* mental issue. Making it about someone else's, at least while they're alive, is not okay, because it can cost them their job or career.
Especially if they ever hold or want to hold jobs with security clearances, or certain jobs with a very, very public profile where a company is especially sensitive to the PR around a role. A company is much less likely to hire you for a C-level position, for example, if people are openly discussing your mental issues online.
But also just if you make someone's mental issue come up in the first page of google hits, the chances of them making it past HR in the normal hiring process probably also drops at least 10%.
Thinking that we live in a socialist society is a mental illness-- or at least, a delusion.
Partly because so little is known about the brain/mind. With something like a heart attack or a murder, there's a fairly clear sequence of cause-effect relationships that start with an known and end with a known. With mental illness, the genetics are obscure and too complex to fathom out by any conventional methods. Genetics aren't, however, the only contributing factor. Epigenetics, chemical signals, environment (including stimuli) right the way through life, it's a nightmare.
There are already 1,100 genes - not SNPs, genes - linked to the brain and 23&Me typically links about 50 SNPs of interest to each gene. That's 55,000 possible mutations, which gives you 2^55000 (10^16500) different combinations. In comparison, there are only 7x10^9 people alive on the planet (which means you can't get good resolution data on how variables interact, even if you studied everyone alive today) and about 10^100 atoms in the universe (which means that you'd nowhere to store sufficient data even if you could obtain it). That's just the genetic contribution, nothing else. What the everything else is, and how it relates, is only known in vague details. That's why news stories on yet another breakthrough are commonplace.
To make things worse, culture hasn't yet caught up to the idea there even is a theory of mind. It's still in some sort of Die Hard - Neolithic stage. Medicine isn't much better, the DSM manual has absolutely bugger all to do with what conditions and illnesses exist, it's about what tag the insurance should be billed under. The American psychiatric association is too busy digging its way out of the threat of criminal charges over direct assistance and fraudulent financial dealings to worry about anyone who is actually sick. The NHS can't afford anything more complex than a door-stop, right now, so don't expect Britain to haul anyone out of this mess. (Britain actually has a fairly good reputation on theoretical and practical psychiatric and neurological treatments, or at least it used to. Now, it's about on equal footing to Zimbabwe.) Australia has a Centre of the Mind, but it looks like it's a long way from getting anywhere - if it does at all. Some of its research seems iffy.
So there's no useful categorization, no meaningful theory, no known mechanics, superficial treatments for only certain diagnoses with rather suspect evidence to back them, no systematic approach towards system analysis, triage or debugging. Not even a definition of what a bug is.
The information in this post plus the fact that I've been here a long time aught to allow anyone here to identify (in very superficial terms) one out of the eight diagnoses I endure. Won't help you, won't help me. Those diagnoses aren't useful if you do want to help anyone, because each is subject to an overlapping combinatorial explosion. No, if you want to be helpful, there are citizen science projects for exploring the brain that will benefit the experts and there are probably insights the deep enthusiasts can contribute somehow by exploring databases and literature from perspectives that aren't obvious to researchers.
When it comes to interacting - understand, respect and listen. Oh, and don't fetishize any principle other than first doing no harm. Every other ethic, philosophy or cultural belief should be expendable if it contradicts that. Consider it a mandatory access control.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To me, the only surprising thing is that they would take the trouble to find out from something like alcoholism. I think tracing people out like that should be reserved for crimes, bit 'taint necessarily so.
I said it then, I'll say it again. Before I retired, I would never ever ever have gone to a website about alcoholism, mental illness, or suicide.
If I had, and after they traced me out, my job would have given me a choice of being fired, or seeking treatment. Even with treatment, my job would have forever changed.
What is worse, although my alcohol is limited to less than 1 adult beverage per month, I would at that point be required to pretend actually having a drinking problem, or else I would be branded as resisting treatment. Gar, sounds like a basis for a novel.
People need to quit treating the web as a private place. It isn't. Get help if you need it, but go through channels that will give you a bit of privacy.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The worst thing you can do is to NOT get treatment or help.
As opposed to losing your job, undergoing life changing alterations in how you are treated by others? Forced onto medicine and end up living under a bridge?
Hell, with perks like that, you'd expect people to fake mental illness.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When someone dies, it's simple respect to his friends and admirers to report the cause and circumstance of his death. From the reports of Murdock's death, it was indisputable that something went very, very wrong in his brain.
Calling someone rude for saying so, presupposes that one is revealing a shameful situation. Not only is that ludicrous, it disrespects the dead. Dude got sick and died. Shouldn't we talk about how to help the next person who gets sick avoid dying?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Yes, yes we are. Something Bruce said that you might find interesting:
I'll tell you another secret then. Open Source was a mistake. I am not a Freetard any longer.
And there's a good chance that some folks will not believe this was a quote from him, it was. Others might suggest that it is taken out of context, it isn't, I will cite it:
This is the relevant link.
I'm assuming he too has gone off the deep end or, more realistically, has been using the movement to gain popularity and money and now has enough to disassociate with the movement, as it has served its purpose.
He just might be crazy. But he appears to be burning bridges as fast as he can.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
No it is not. And if you would get your information from serious sources instead of FoxNews then you would know what socialism means. Feel free to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It might provide a good start for understanding the term.
I did read the thread and expanded it and it is *very* obvious that the post you quoted was flagrant sarcasm.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I think he has a good, solid point. There are significantly more men in mental institutions than women, and I think I know why: nobody will put up with crazy shit from a man. He is just labeled dangerous and stigmatized. People put up with crazy shit from women all day. They are just as dangerous, you've got to sleep sometime. Men are still culturally expected to be the breadwinners, but they are probably equally likely to suffer a debilitating mental illness, so there's an additional component of stress there. None of this excuses any particular kind of behavior.
Do you have some alternate theory as to why there are more men in mental institutions than women? Because I'll read it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nonsense. If the organic/neurological problems didn't result in notable behavior experienced by others, nobody would care. The thing that people notice is the behavior. And that behavior is only notable when it falls outside of social norms. Some people - without any genetic or other medical condition - also act outside of social norms (because they want to) and their behavior is also noted by the people around them. It really doesn't matter why someone is a terrible communicator, or why someone responds to normal human interaction with alarming behavior - it's the fact of that behavior that others notice, and which raises concern. If someone completely hides that issue, and can act and respond normally, then the fact of their having a diagnosed condition really doesn't matter - nobody would notice or care.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So you'd have the same reaction to a baby accidentally being sick on you as you would to a fully-grown person purposefully being sick on you. If the answer is "no", you might want to figure out why that makes you a terrible person.
Not socialism. The difference is really simple. Communism is public ownership of the means of production. Socialism is govt regulation of income inequality to prevent abuses, slavery by wages and ensure a minimum and humane standard of life. Don't fall for the propaganda. We can make the world a better place for everyone.
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