this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
671 points (94.2% liked)
Comic Strips
12679 readers
3398 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- [email protected]: "I use Arch btw"
- [email protected]: memes (you don't say!)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, the problem with this line of thinking is that we do have empirical evidence that depressed people DO get better by making a huge effort to get better.
Drag had anecdotal evidence, which is incredibly weak evidence.
Drag may have had baseless belief in something and it worked out, but my point is, the evidence WAS available to support that point.
Yes, it was, but evidence doesn't work on most people with severe depression. The disease impairs the part of your brain that processes good news. Drag understood the evidence, but drag's dragon couldn't, because it was sick. That's what depression is.
Drag doesn't have to explain depression to me.
If Drag understood the evidence, then it sounds like the conclusion Drag should come to is not to baselessly believe in things without evidence, but rather to make a better use of context to rid dragself of blindness caused by anecdotal evidence.
Is that your advice to depressed people who think life is hopeless? To use context better?
No? I'm depressed, too.
Let me do the same stupid shit drag just did.
Is that your advice to depressed people who think life is hopeless? Belief in things without having real evidence?
My point is that drag came to the wrong conclusion.
Yeah, that's exactly what drag was trying to say. Believing in things without evidence forms an important PART of a treatment plan. It should also be supplemented by exercise, medication, social activities, and CBT if possible.
Drag is saying that depressed people should "just believe" which is much crazier than saying depressed people should "just believe in evidence".
People do not need to believe in what drag is saying without evidence, because that evidence exists, so they can just as easily believe in it WITH evidence.
Depression makes it harder to believe the evidence that things can get better, because the disease impairs the part of your brain that processes good news. If you're functional enough that you can believe good news, drag is proud of you.
So drag somehow thinks that believing in nothing is easier than believing in proven fact?
Yeah, if you have a disease that impairs you ability to process facts. When a disease is impairing your judgement so you can't see the facts, believing in facts is impossible. You can't see them. That's like asking a blind from birth person to believe in the colour red. When you tell a severely depressed person to believe in facts, they just feel frustrated that they can't see the facts. They feel like you're lying to them. It's counterproductive.
If you tell them to believe in nothing, well that's easy, because nothing is precisely what they can see. It doesn't feel like a contradiction to them. They are acknowledging the absurdity of what they must do and then doing it.