To be fair, you made a claim that "mental health treatment has come an incredibly long way". And the only evidence you have offered to back that up is a vague personal anecdote.
The poster was simply providing their viewpoint on the state of mental health that differs from yours.
I understand these things can cause strong emotions, but you don't do yourself or your stance any favors by letting it get the best of you here.
Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I had a seizure because of medication I was put on for a mental illness I didn't believe I had. I wasn't 18 and my parents essentially forced me to take them. The pills didn't do anything for me besides give me a seizure that easily could've killed me (I was hospitalized).
There's also actual research suggesting these pills can increase suicide attempts.
There is enormous money to be made suggesting these pills are useful, so I don't just assume it to be true. I also know many other people who feel anti-depressants ruined their lives. I also know many people who feel anti-depressants saved their lives.
It's not black and white. Personally, I feel the efficacy of pills for mental health are greatly exaggerated - but it's easy to see why I might be biased.
I don't know your personal journey, but I think it would be fairly easy to find people with very deep, very real mental health problems who fully believe they do not have a problem.
> The pills didn't do anything for me
Again, I don't know your personal journey, but as a counter anecdote when I started taking medication I couldn't tell if they were having any effect at all, but apparently it had such an effect that some of the people around me could tell me the day I started taking it, along with measurable improvements.
Not to invalidate your experiences, just adding to the anecdotal pool
Yes. It is the same real, measurable response you would get from an effective medication even though no medication was given. In many cases the rate at which placebo occurs is surprisingly high. (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437)
I know what placebos are. But the effect is created by telling the patient you gave them medication. So I don't believe it's possible to make "treatment by placebo" a standard.
Vague personal anecdotes doesn't mean they are not from the real world.
You're taking someone else's valid criticism of the state of the therapy methods available today and taking it personally as well as unwarrantedly attributing it to a lack of sympathy.
You fail to understand that the goal of criticizing the therapy method is precisely so we may find ways to improve it.
Because, getting back to the original point, stating "Mental health treatment has come an incredibly long way, just in the last couple of decades" without offering any substantive support for this viewpoint (regardless of whether one's anecdotes are "real world" or not) is, in and of itself, a valid criticism. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide a rationale to back it up.
I did something similar, but in reverse. Rather than give myself an arbitrary "death day", as the author did, I instead chose to make a life clock. It's just a display of my age in years, months, days, and seconds.
The advantage of this is that it is 100% true. There are no mental tricks you can play. Things like: I know my clock says 8500 days, but I'm sure I have more than that.
I find I get much the same feeling watching the values ever increasing as I would watching some arbitrary number increase. You're watching the grains of sand fall through the hourglass.
Ladies and gentlemen - in one corner we have a handful of citizens concerned enough about an issue to occasionally write an email to their congressperson, which if they're extraordinarily lucky will be digested by an intern and show up as a line in a memo the congressperson glances at the next morning. Truly intimidating! Now, in the other corner - a team of trained professionals paid full-time to get the congressperson to ignore that line in their memo, tirelessly working toward this goal every day because that is literally what they are paid large sums of money to do. Now - fight!
Let's take this idea to the extreme for a moment and see if you agree that it's a problem.
A new device is created that alerts 50% of the US population that they have a condition that needs to be treated. Only 10% of those cases warranted further action.
Do you imagine there would be adverse side effects of hospitals being overrun with patients that didn't need to be there?
How can you utterly fail to see a problem with an influx of false positives to an already overloaded healthcare system?
This is ridiculous, if such a device exists and can detect a new condition that 5% of the US population has with a 80% false positive rate, and the condition was as serious as heart disease this would really be a miracle device and people would be grateful that such a thing exists.
I really have distaste for those comments that attempt to mask ideology with a veneer of logic. You attempt to use a limiting case argument that actually proves the original comment's argument and then end with rhetoric about how the healthcare system is being flooded already. That may be true, but that isn't relevant to the utility of the apple watch in this scenario.
> This is ridiculous, if such a device exists and can detect a new condition that 5% of the US population has with a 80% false positive rate, and the condition was as serious as heart disease this would really be a miracle device and people would be grateful that such a thing exists.
Since we're overly simplifying, there _are_ devices that can detect conditions that 5% of the population has _and_ have far fewer false positives - X-rays, CT scans, MRI. In the grand scheme amazing things, but no-one's calling them "miracle devices".
Oh, but they are miracle devices, and were considered as such initially. But the difference between them and the hypothetical miracle device is accessibility. MRIs and CT scans are not something you can use to casually test half of the country's population.
You might be right in an ideal world, but in reality there are significant resource constraints on healthcare.
What would be more likely to happen in that scenario, is that so many people would be seeking care that the 5% who were positive would be unlikely to even get the care they need.
Further, such an influx would have knock-on effects on unrelated patients, whose care would suffer due to the severe lack of resources.
This is all magnified if the resource is not a general practice physician, but a specialist.
Wait - but if I'm reading the article correctly, it's not the case that all these people are flooding the ER, requiring urgent care. An alert pops up, a person is concerned, they decide to schedule a visit to their doctor.
If the healthcare system - paid healthcare system - can't handle a slow baseline increase in non-emergency visits, then something is seriously wrong with this picture.
That really does sound like ideology cloaked in common sense. Demand for great healthcare is already essentially infinite no matter what new technology comes along, and we need a sane way to deal with that. Pointing fingers at the demand side is a common diversionary tactic.
> Further, such an influx would have knock-on effects on unrelated patients, whose care would suffer due to the severe lack of resources.
Hypothetically, let's assume over a long period of time new devices are alerting users to possible medical conditions. Those appointments are paid for (I'm guessing). Will that money not fund more availability over time? The supply of doctors is not supposed to be fixed.
The study started with 767,338 patients with clinical notes.
Out of that haystack, only 41 referred to an Apple Watch alert about abnormal pulse detection.
And of that 7 were found to have enough concern to further explore potential cardiovascular disease.
So, out of three quarters of a million visits, there were 41 with concerns from an Apple Watch, and 7 people received early treatment they might not have otherwise received (which could potentially save millions of dollars of future healthcare costs).
34 people were false positives and inconvenienced with a doctor's visit.
Since you're feeling judgmental ("How can you utterly fail to see a problem..."), let's take it the other extreme.
Suppose a device is released that has a 30% false positive rate: two-thirds of the people it identifies have an actual underlying condition that requires treatment.
Presumably you would not be opposed to this. (If you do, you'd seem to be opposed to any effort to catch conditions early.)
So then we're at a discussion about what the correct percentage of false positives is for a further diagnostic - in this case, likely a holter monitor, to identify if it's an actual issue, which is not that expensive.
You believe it's obvious that ten percent is an outrageous number. But if the next step is a fairly inexpensive diagnostic, and the subject matter is a potentially lethal condition (often the case with hearts), it's not obvious at all.
What's your acceptable "brightline" of maximum false positivity to warrant additional diagnostic? Fifty percent? Twenty percent?
> I'm going to risk going against the zeitgeist and expose myself to a bunch of downvotes right now.
It’s off topic, but I recommend you do it. I’ve found HN to be a great place for those types of discussions provided you have a relatively thick skin and don’t engage in hostility.
> A new device is created that alerts 50% of the US population that they have a condition that needs to be treated. Only 10% of those cases warranted further action.
This just improved the lives of 16 million people. That is not insignificant. And that's assuming 16 million people would have the same condition.
This also might be underestimating the number of false positives doctors already deal with and that these devices may actually lower that number.
That's an unrealistic scenario since 5% (10% of 50%) of the population doesn't have an otherwise difficult to detect and life threatening condition. And if they did, then there is a serious problem and we would expect the hospitals to be overrun.
It sounds like you're the type of person to blame external factors for your own issues. Nothing you're saying counters the original advice.
Additionally, in the guitar example, you learned how to play and learned what it meant to own a decent guitar. Then, when presented with the opportunity to buy a new guitar: bought a crappy one, ignoring everything you had already learned about the instrument.
Given that you were so easily discouraged from learning the guitar, it's also equally likely that it wasn't something you were truly passionate about and gave yourself an excuse at every turn as to why you weren't progressing.
> Nothing you're saying counters the original advice.
The original advice was to buy the cheapest thing and just use it. GP's advice was "Sometimes you don't know what the minimum viable is because you are a beginner and don't know yourself well in that field."
GP then gave specific examples of cheap products that aren't particularly suitable for beginners: (1) cheap running shoes that lead to bad habits and possible injuries and (2) cheap guitars that are difficult to play. For both examples, he described how as a beginner he lacked the experience to know what he needed.
I watched the video. I'm sorry, but its inane. This is the worst sort of science magic. In fact its just trickery.
Do you seriously think that you have been provided evidence in that video? All that happened is that I ended up looking at a leaf and packets of things that weren't moving at all. That's not evidence!
It says that they are picking up vibrations from a leaf or bag of crisps. But they don't show you those vibrations. They just give you a bunch of graphics and fuzzy sounds and tell you that they have done something.
You do see that this is could be very simple video trickery right? As with the initial article - there's a claim, but nothing to really be able to use to verify that claim. Just a graphic, and references to Shazam. Perhaps this is guerrilla marketing for Shazam? Its a more viable thesis anyway, given the evidence!
I think we should demand more. We are being presented science right? We should be able to recognise that this article and the videos, etc are just presenting a claim. They are not providing any evidence. This is just a story.
I'm saying, if someone writes an article and it is published, should we believe it?
You're saying that I should use tools to replicate the experiment. Great - this is what we should do before we accept something as true. Otherwise, we are in the realms of 'belief'.
So, do you believe this story? And did you do due diligence, and confirm with the tools that it is true? Or did you skip that bit and believe it despite the fact that NO evidence is presented at all? Be honest when you answer please!
Stepping back a bit, I'm not saying anything so drastic. I certainly don't see why I'm being downvoted. I'm really talking about applying the scientific method personally. I'm saying don't accept articles, videos by default, without even critically reading what is being presented. I really think its pretty obvious stuff, tbh!
You’ve been provided with links to an article from a credible source, a paper, and a video, and you say you don’t believe any of it. The physics of this effect are both well known and easily demonstrated. What level of evidence is required in your mind?
Firstly, note that it provides no evidence. It has a claim, and shows a fancy graphic. That's it. Its not evidence. Anyone can make that sort of thing up. How can one differentiate this from a story I just made up?
Digging in, it says:
"LED bulbs also offer a signal-to-noise ratio that's about 6.3 times that of an incandescent bulb and 70 times a fluorescent one."
Why? Why are LEDs better for this noise reflection stuff, than incandescent or fluorescent ones? They're all in glass. The heat of the glass is stable. The LED itself surely can't help.
Why does Shazam feature in these tests, at all?!
It also says:
"Researchers have known for years that a laser bounced off a target's window can allow spies to pick up the sounds inside. Another group of researchers showed in 2014 that the gyroscope of a compromised smartphone can pick up sounds even if the malware can't access its microphone."
Right. Are we meant to believe that this is what spies do? I mean, a spy just has to access whatever systems are already at his or her disposal and listen to your calls. They don't need to do any of that!
And:
"Still, Nassi says the researchers are publishing their findings not to enable spies or law enforcement, but to make clear to those on both sides of surveillance what's possible. "We want to raise the awareness of this kind of attack vector," he says. "We’re not in the game of providing tools.""
So, they even say that this article is about raising awareness of this kind of attack vector. They are raising awareness. Thanks spies!
The article is a joke. At best this is a puff piece for a spy agency, or more likely just to increase paranoid awareness amongst those in tech. Be scared, danger everywhere! There are spy agencies listening to you everywhere - they're not using your phone, they use light bulbs and leaves!!
PS, at what point would alarm bells ring for you, re this story. If they had said that they could pick up voices from a lightbulb with a telescope that was 50m away? 100m? 1000m?!?
I suspect that alarm bells wouldn't ring at all....
> You don't have much freedom if your lungs don't work.
Freedom and safety may not be polar opposites, but there's certainly tension between them. Many believe that you should have the freedom to decide what to do with your own lungs. The idea that you lose freedom because your lungs don't work seems to be a willful misinterpretation of the idea of freedom from government.
If the reason why your lungs don't work is a virus, as in this case, you're not just talking about your own freedom, you're talking about the freedoms of others. And given that these brave people are the first ones to line up in the ER, this is obviously an issue of public health, it has the word 'public' in the name for a reason.
We're living in complex societies where reckless behaviour puts others at risk. If you live on a sheep farm in the appalachians do with your lungs what you want, the reality of modern urban society is that we're interconnected. In that context freedom and safety are mutually dependent, even reinforcing.
The idea of "I can do with my X whatever I want" and then stop thinking there and calling everyone a fascist or an oligarch made a lot of sense if you're a 18th century homesteader, it doesn't make much sense today.
Should you have freedom to walk naked? Nudists were advocating this kind of freedom for a long time. I personally have sympathy for this point of view.
Passing COVID-19 or flu onto another person, especially elderly, may kill that person. Walking naked with mask if you keep your body clean as far as I can see will not kill anybody. So, why should we enforce clothes if we do not enforce masks?
I know. So, just to be sure. Are you suggesting that limiting freedom because of "moral decency" is ok, but limiting freedom because you can kill people is not? And what is "moral decency" anyway, because in many Asian countries people will look at you as if you are breaking moral standards when without a mask.
Also, children are perfectly able to handle asexual nudity. A lot of countries in Europe allow being top-less in public places like beaches.
There is just no way to justify things like enforcing bras on women, but not enforcing masks in crowded places during pandemic.
The poster was simply providing their viewpoint on the state of mental health that differs from yours.
I understand these things can cause strong emotions, but you don't do yourself or your stance any favors by letting it get the best of you here.