
On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness - fern12
http://www.theopennotebook.com/2017/07/18/on-being-a-science-writer-and-managing-a-mental-illness/
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shubhamjain
> For one thing, choosing writing as a way of making a living can nurture
> insecurity and doubt—especially for those, like myself, who are early in
> their careers. For me, at least, publishing a story is like handing in an
> exam essay, an invitation for strict judgment by both the intended audience
> and my peers.

I think people in tech tend to underappreciate the benefits of being able to
just do the job and enjoy a (comparatively) lesser-stressful life with
enviable benefits. Programming is creative endeavour too, but, no one is asked
to build a product that succeeds in the market; that's the job of management.

Being a writer, or a musician, on the other hand, entails a perennial anxiety
over the success of whatever you're doing. How will you ever know if your next
thing will be liked or not? How will you know if you should continue working
on your project when it starts to feel like an incoherent mess?

I have moments of self-doubt too but I am confident that I won't suddenly
cease to be a decent programmer who gets things done. For many creative people
who do it full time, it means fighting the monster every day.

~~~
jokoon
You can be creative for your own self, and not for others. You don't always
need to show your creations. That removes the success anxiety. You should not
try to be liked by others, it's very unproductive. Or at least it should not
be your primary concern.

Even if people say they don't like your creation, it doesn't matter as long as
you like it. Nobody cares about your sleeping position, and if somebody
criticizes it (unless it's a doctor), you already know their opinion doesn't
matter because 1) evolution works by listening to our feelings 2) you can't
know the absolute truth about anything 3) there are many diverse opinions out
there. It applies to creativity as well.

Only time and long term execution will tell if what you do matters (and to be
honest, it does not matter anyway). But ultimately your cannot apprehend your
work and the expectations of people. People are not able to tell you what they
want, so it's not worth it to listen to them. I like to think creativity works
in the realm of evolution and natural selection. It's impossible to predict
what will work or not.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
I agree with a lot of this, and I think it's helpful to remember that people
perceive things differently. In much the same way that cilantro tastes like
soap to some people, certain images, tropes, and turns of phrase will not
resonate with some people - no matter their quality. If the work is of high
quality, it will resonate with some people/some groups - in your lifetime, if
you're fortunate.

Take your work seriously, but don't take your art seriously. Do the best you
can, experiment, test your limits, but at the end of the day, have
perspective. Even if you reach the highest level of your craft, you're still
just you. If you spend time developing yourself, trust your instincts and
creativity, and you're a brutal self-editor, you should put out work
representative of where you're at as a person/artist. To my understanding,
that's all you can do.

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hycaria
>A 40-year study published in 2012 found that writers are more likely than
people in other, less creative occupations to suffer from mental illnesses
such as bipolar, depression, and general anxiety disorder.

This bothers me. It's correlated but the following analysis assumes at least
partly that being a writer is one possible factor for depression. Very common
mistake most HNers are probably aware of.

For a science writer to read papers so wrongly is rather ironic.

~~~
dan00
> It's correlated but the following analysis assumes at least partly that
> being a writer is one possible factor for depression.

And why shouldn't it be a possible factor? Correlation doesn't tell that it
has to be a factor but neither the opposite.

~~~
hycaria
Yes, maybe, but there's no proof so why assume it and make an article like
this which doesn't even has any reserve about it (reread the paragraph I
quoted if you doubt my claim) ? There's not even one "maybe" in his whole
essay !

~~~
dan00
Ok, I'm really more bothered by the expected scientific rigorous from an essay
like this.

He's a writer and is experiencing the difficulties of his work and how it
effects his emotional well being. It shouldn't then really surprise that he
sees a strong connection between his work as a writer and the depressions he
has. That doesn't mean he's telling an objective truth about a writer's life,
but he's telling a subjective "truth" of his life as a writer, and sometimes
these subjective "truths" can tell you quite a bit about life.

Sometimes the HN crowd can get quite a bit annoying with its scientific
thinking, because it's not always the appropiate method, and sometimes a
single person can tell you more about a certain aspect of the world then any
kind of scientific study.

I'm certainly not arguing against the scientific method, but to apply it in a
reasonable way.

~~~
akvadrako
The suggestion that there are other kinds of valid thinking besides scientific
thinking is way off.

No matter how obvious something feels, you can't know it's truth value. Humans
can have auditory, visual and conceptual delusions that are completely
convincing and completely opposite of what other humans experience.

The only conclusion you can draw from this essay is it's actually how the
author says he thinks he feels. This may be a good starting hypothesis for a
more rigorous study, but it says very little about life in general.

~~~
tnzn
So you're saying your comment isn't valid thinking?

~~~
akvadrako
My comment would fall under the hypothesis generation step of the scientific
method, just like the article.

It may or may not be proper thinking - without executing the remaining steps
to test a theory, we can't know.

------
chaostheory
On a related note, Phillip K Dick's work seems to have gotten better over time
the more his schizophrenia progressed.

------
gcb0
reads like a medication pamphlet.

therapy is more useful than drugs, even if drugs are needed eventually.

but I think this follow the US school of thought, where therapy is just one
session required for liability before you're sent to a psych who will
prescribe a pill regimen on the very first session. unbelievable.

~~~
viach
> therapy is more useful than drugs, even if drugs are needed eventually.

Is it your opinion based on... ?

~~~
gcb0
says the whole world. almost every european country requires you to do minimum
hours of therapy before and to keep with therapy during the drug usage.

to begin with, I could refer you to the study the article is about. it
correlates a social setting with high occurrence of depression. then it
proceeds to promote the solution with medication. when the obvious solution is
changing the social setting! that is the definition of the 80s joke "prozac
for bad hair day"

~~~
vertex-four
Or, in other words, (at least some part of) the medical industry is driven by
the neoliberal ideal that it's never anything else that's the problem, only
yourself, and you're meant to deal with it with minimal impact on anyone
around you?

Work must never be an issue, or we might have to treat workers well. Society
and societal structures must never be an issue, or we might have to care about
each other on a more than skin-deep level and drop this whole "we are all
independent beings who are completely unaffected by external factors" madness.

At least some part of mental healthcare is essentially a system designed to
help people cope with a society which does horrific things to them, and then
gaslights them into believing it's their fault for not coping with it.

~~~
jokoon
> and then gaslights them into believing it's their fault for not coping with
> it.

I don't understand why you say that.

Are you saying therapy make people feel guilty of their own self?

~~~
vertex-four
No, society does that. Our society is, apparently, perfect, and if you have
trouble living in it, it's your fault - says society. However, how we often
approach mental healthcare - as something individualistic and separate from
society - is one of the things that normalises it.

~~~
jokoon
> is one of the things that normalises it.

Why ?

It depends, coping with the imperfection of society is also something to work
on. Accepting its flaws lets you walk around it. Sometimes it's not the
individual who is the problem, but it doesn't mean he should not accept how
the society is flawed.

Mental healthcare and therapy have an individualistic approach because that's
what they do, how else? To change society you would need politics, and that's
another matter entirely.

I often say that mental illness doesn't really exist, because as long as we
don't understand the brain there is no "normal" behavior. But as the same time
you can't deny that society has its norms.

~~~
vertex-four
> To change society you would need politics, and that's another matter
> entirely.

That's the point - it's _not_ another matter entirely. If society is damaging
people's mental health, it's entirely unethical to look the other way and
pretend it's each individual's problem. If mental healthcare professionals
want to ensure the wellbeing of their patients, they need to be fighting
alongside us for widespread societal change, and they need to fight against
the myth of poor mental health being an individual anomaly.

But getting to that point requires an understanding that mental health isn't
individualistic in the first place, which is not what we're told, and it's not
what our doctors are taught. What we have right now is, a lot of the time,
treating symptoms and providing coping mechanisms instead of treating the
causes. Imagine a doctor did that with a broken leg - refused to touch it, but
instead provided you painkillers and explained how to plan routes around the
city with lots of seats you can sit in when the pain gets too much.

~~~
jokoon
I see what you mean, except mental illnesses can't be treated like a broken
leg can be.

Mental health is a difficult subject.

Imagine the problem it can be to treat homosexual as equals in the political
scene, it will be another story to have consideration for the mentally ill.

The more we become a society of people with knowledge rather than social norms
and morals, the more we will be able to progress.

I also really believe that group therapy should be the future of therapy...

Maybe you should have a conversation with a psychologist or a therapist and
talk about those things. A possibility is also that patients need to be told
that nothing is their fault. It can take a lot of time to defuse the person's
belief that a he/she is not "defective". There is no shame in going to
therapy, it's all about talking, because that the most concrete thing you can
do with a brain.

