
Burn-out visible in the brains of patients - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Burn-out+visible+in+the+brains+of+patients
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JoeAltmaier
Employers should take note: a new way to discriminate in hiring!

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percept
Well now they'll do the credit check, play fill the cup, and the brain scan.

On the plus side I have a new excuse for trips to Starbucks.

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GFischer
Can you explain the "fill the cup" part? Haven't heard that idiom before (non-
native English speaker here)

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goatforce5
A reference to urine based drug testing.

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GFischer
Thanks to both.

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s3graham
Well, that kind of freaks me out. I've always kind of assumed killing myself
on a project just might require a vacation to solve. Perma-burnout... yikes.

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jacquesm
I wonder how many of us have come close to this or have experienced it in real
life, coders are known for burning out early in life, I know a whole bunch of
examples just from my own environment.

A famous example is L Peter Deutsch, the 'wunderkind' that programmed a LISP
at the ripe old age of 15.

Read here:

<http://devlinux.org/deutsch-interview.html>

Or read 'coders at work'.

He's in to music mostly these days, hacks every now and then though.

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DaniFong
For what it's worth, my friend Patrick Collison wrote an aware winning Lisp at
15 -- and is still hacking.

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jacquesm
Cool! Is it public? How old is he now?

At 15 I never brought it further than writing small basic programs on a tandy
'pocket' computer.

The first time dabbling in languages was writing a 6809 macro assemlber, but
that had to wait until I was 17. Those really young kids cranking out code at
that level really amaze me, I don't think I had even heard of LISP at that
age.

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pc
I'm 21.

I wrote a bit about how I ended up getting into Lisp at
<http://lemonodor.com/archives/001038.html>. (And I'm glad I did, because I
can hardly remember now.)

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jacquesm
Thank you Patrick. Wow. Really, that one word says it all, but on a little
longer note, and from a bit more than twice your age, you impress the hell out
of me.

Not just because of your age, but mostly because you have things so 'together'
at your age.

Most kids at the age of 15 are laying the seeds for the wasting of the next
decade of their lives, you decided to lay the foundation for the rest of your
life instead.

Keep going! And don't burn out! (please) The energy pit is not endless, even
if it seems to be so. I've found that out the hard way.

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rubidium
The interesting comparison to me would be to study those people who exhibit
the same symptoms (listlessness, short attention span, lack of work
productivity) and compare their response to this study.

Do people who claim depression/other ills independent of burn-out score the
same? It's unclear how the burn-out group was chosen.

Also, I'm concerned about establishing burn-out as a disease (as am I with
most psychological diseases) because the victim mentality can set in pretty
quick (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_therapy> for interesting
reading on this). "Sorry, I can't work today. I'm burned out. But you can't
fire me. See, I have this disease. It's not my fault."

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ewjordan
_Also, I'm concerned about establishing burn-out as a disease (as am I with
most psychological diseases) because the victim mentality can set in pretty
quick_

Yes, kind of like how people with major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder and a host of other psychological afflictions feel like victims.

Of course, they _are_. That the problems are mental is no reason to put these
things any lower on the "serious" scale than physical problems.

I'm all for accuracy and debate when figuring out whether certain "diseases"
are made up or not, but once there's clear evidence that something is real, to
pretend that it's not just because some people might use it as an excuse is
ridiculous and cruel. Sure, people might abuse this as an excuse, sort of like
how they lie all the time about the stomach flu and dying grandmothers, but
that doesn't change the seriousness of the situation (and the fact that you
_really can't_ work) when you actually have one of those things happen to you.
And the solution is, as before, to sniff out bullshit and punish it, not
reject wholesale what doctors are saying is a legitimate excuse.

Of course, this has only been a single article, this is certainly not as well
established as most other psychological problems are, so the jury is still
out, for sure.

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dhs
No, they are not victims - they are patients. This "victims/non-victims" meme
is just wrong, and it's toxic. Please don't spread it.

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argv_empty
Last I checked, "victim" was the conventional term to apply to someone with a
significant illness, e.g. "cholera victim." Patients are just the ones
currently receiving medical attention for it.

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dhs
The point is that, when dealing with people who's sense-of-self is
pathologically affected, I suggest you steer away from the "victim" concept,
because it is ideologically loaded. Whether depressive or not, people often
_want_ to think that they can "choose to not be a victim", which can be a very
destructive idea for some. It's much more healthy to think in terms of
"patient", because most people don't think that one can "choose to not be a
patient".

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eagleal
Can this be the paper?
[http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/...](http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/208)

(I don't have access to the journal)

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gruseom
What is meant by burn-out here? The article doesn't define it.

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jacquesm
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_%28psychology%29>

I'll add that link to the article. Thanks for identifying the oversight, I
thought the term was common enough not to have to define it.

