Many people are scared of seeing mental health professionals because we live in the period of history where these sciences are just starting out, so when someone says "I always lose my job or quit", there is an immediate jump towards diagnosing that person with a mental "illness". The problem is that these diagnoses aren't only happening in error and without consequences on HN. I would argue that it is far more productive to avoid suggesting mental illness as the cause of a behavioral problem unless there is clear reason to do so.
Yes, people are generally wary of seeing mental health professionals. That's understandable. There's some stigma associated with being thought to be mentally ill, and psychology is a young science studying phenomena that are devilishly hard to study. Clinical psychology in particular is forced to rely a lot on inherited lore, personal experience, and intuition, because the needed science isn't really there yet.
But that doesn't mean nobody should see a therapist. It isn't all snake oil.
A good therapist can help you identify where you need to get to for your own sake, and what skills will help you get there. They can help you realize when you're putting stumbling blocks in your own path and figure out how to stop doing that. They can help you pick out goals, point you in the right direction, and sometimes offer some help getting started on the way. The rest is up to you, of course.
You don't have to be mentally ill to benefit from a therapist's help. In fact, I think you're likely to benefit more if you're basically pretty healthy than if you're not, simply because you're more functional, and therefore better able to make use of what you learn.
That's my perspective from having seen a therapist for a while a couple of times earlier in life, from having encouraged my offspring to see them at difficult moments, from having a friend who is a licensed clinical counselor, and from having gone to graduate school in clinical psychology before I became a programmer.
Caveat emptor, of course. There are good therapists and there are charlatans. Look carefully and use common sense.
You’re exactly right. It seems every Ask HN thread lately comes with an armchair diagnosis of ADHD lately.
Mental health professionals are available if you or your partner would like to talk. Therapists would be a better place to start than jumping to a psychiatrist and medications. Definitely don’t try to get ADHD stimulants and power through burnout in a job she hates. That would make burnout exponentially worse.
If your partner decides to try therapy, it can even be done over video calls now. Depending on insurance the video therapy is often quite cheap, too. Of course, it’s up to you if you want to pursue that route. I agree that jumping to specific diagnoses based on a few sentences of your question is inappropriate.
>Definitely don’t try to get ADHD stimulants and power through burnout in a job she hates.
Some people hate working, period. And the kind of job that's fun or engaging for you might not be available to you. For the overwhelming majority of people, their lot in life is to toil at something they'd rather not be doing. But normal people are able to put their heads down and get it done. If you can't and it's causing problems in your life, that's something you should see someone about. Finding a more enjoyable job might be part of the solution, but remember that such options are often a luxury of the elite.
Normal people don't get fired, or quit just in time to avoid getting fired, from every job. If you're smart enough for the job, then there's something else going on that a psychologist or psychiatrist is well-equipped to handle. Like I said, it's not necessarily ADHD. But it is abnormal behavior and if it makes you unhappy or unfulfilled in this life, then you should do something about it. A good place to start is a mental health professional.
I said “abysmal private internet speeds and capacity”. Note the word “private” (which you omitted). By all accounts, the speed and capacity available to US residents in their homes is far inferior (both in price and speed/capacity) to what is available in many nations in the world. Sorry, I don’t have a reference, it’s just what I hear people say every time the topic comes up.
It is, and it is (I thought?) common knowledge due to the high profile cases where this was abused. There's nothing morally wrong about doing it, but it is illegal and people do face consequences for it.
Hm. So how do homeless people register to vote? Can I register in the same way? Cursory Google search seems to indicate you only need a mailing address, and your residence can be described as a cross street or some such.
I mean, I don't care if the government knows where I live, but I do care if they leak it to people without my explicit consent.
Make sure you actually read their ToS and Privacy Policy. This is nearly useless at best and harmful at worst.
"If you purchase a paid subscription plan, as a condition to fulfilling your subscription plan, (i) you must provide your personally identifiable information(“PII”) such as full name, birth year and home address to Optery, Inc. and (ii) Optery, Inc. must send your PII to the data brokers and information aggregators included in the Removal Lists. This information is required by the data brokers and information aggregators in order to locate your record(s) and remove you from their database(s). We cannot control, guarantee or warranty how these third-parties will treat your PII or what they will do with it."
As has been mentioned elsewhere here, how exactly would it work otherwise? i.e. how do you suggest someone opts out of a data broker, without providing PII?
Opting out presents a catch-22 where in order to opt out, you have to tell them who you are, i.e. provide PII.
If you have a method for opting out of people search data brokers without providing PII, I’d love to hear how that works.
