alt.hn

12/6/2025 at 12:06:53 PM

'Life being stressful is not an illness' – GPs on mental health over-diagnosis

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pvxdn9v4o

by jnord

12/6/2025 at 1:05:05 PM

A UK doctor friend mentioned they believed a lot of people being prescribed anti-depressants were suffering from "shit life syndrome" rather than real depression. This wasn't to belittle the issues but rather to highlight the issues they maybe facing, which society doesn't deem valuable enough to fix and the GP is one of the only perceived options they have for help.

by intheitmines

12/6/2025 at 1:39:05 PM

I feel like there’s a balance between —- a thing that really helped me in life was seeing a therapist in my early twenties who really validated a lot of my struggles and take them seriously. But also, kept me from going to far in the other direction of wallowing or being driven by a label.

Part of the problem is the medical system doesn’t have great language around this, I think in America in order for insurance to pay for therapy there has to be diagnosis. My therapists solution to that was to provide a diagnosis but we didn’t really lean into it, he just explained that’s the process.

But the language around diagnosis unfortunately has implicitly power. We probably should talk about mental illness much less that way.

by techblueberry

12/6/2025 at 4:04:20 PM

[flagged]

by lostmsu

12/8/2025 at 4:12:56 AM

You've broken the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread and others lately. Crossing into personal attack is particularly unwelcome.

We ban accounts that post like this, and we've asked you more than once before, so that's not good. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd be grateful.

by dang

12/8/2025 at 2:35:20 PM

I agree, that I post a lot of snarky replies and that is generally against the rules. But in this case what was the rule I broken?

The parent says that they themselves had reservations about having a diagnosis associated with whatever problem they had. I merely pointed out the negative side of the coin ("wasted money") if over diagnosis is the case here (which considering the recent threads on the topic and author's own previous doubt seemed probable to me). I mentioned the author ("you") as the responsible party, because that's what needs to be considered. Otherwise it is easy to defer blame to "the system" and absolve oneselfs from personal responsibility.

by lostmsu

12/8/2025 at 9:49:06 PM

There are a bunch of guidelines you broke there. If you want an example, how about ""Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."" or this one: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

More importantly, though, is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place, so if you're asking for specific rule citations about a comment which obviously was not in the intended spirit of the site, we're already off track a bit.

by dang

12/6/2025 at 5:47:45 PM

Where’s the fraud? I had the listed condition, but even physical diagnosis don’t have to define you.

I’m plenty capable of policing my own moral failings thank you very much.

by techblueberry

12/8/2025 at 4:06:59 AM

Holy shit man. Get your gears check, they are grinding hard.

by dwaltrip

12/6/2025 at 4:30:16 PM

won't someone think of the insurance companies?

by cocainemonster

12/7/2025 at 4:48:19 AM

The sheer level of aggressive bootlicking I occasionally run into on hackernews is mind-boggling.

by array_key_first

12/8/2025 at 12:45:24 PM

Do you understand the consequences of insurance companies or government paying for something that does not need medical intervention en masse? Where do you think they get money to do that?

by lostmsu

12/6/2025 at 1:08:04 PM

This is correct. It’s amazing how easy it is to relax when you don’t feel economic precarity etc.

by only-one1701

12/6/2025 at 1:28:30 PM

This is also why I kind of hate it when rich people say that money doesn't make you happy. It's true, it doesn't but if you don't know how to pay for your next meal or worse your kids next meal, or you're sick and can't afford good care, then money does make all the difference.

In mathematical terms money might not be sufficient to make you happy, but it's a necessary condition indeed.

by carlmr

12/8/2025 at 6:03:50 AM

“Having money isn’t everything, not having it is” - Kanye West

by nlawalker

12/6/2025 at 1:42:40 PM

Ah thanks for putting it into the necessary/sufficient vocab. Makes so much more sense to explain it that way.

by mettamage

12/6/2025 at 1:33:23 PM

Yeah, and like, a nontrivial amount of it tbqh

by only-one1701

12/6/2025 at 1:10:11 PM

It’s almost like we are not optimizing society for human flourishing.

by voisin

12/6/2025 at 1:27:09 PM

There is a persistent and perhaps fundamental problem of balancing self optimization and social optimization.

A group of people are trudging through the desert with limited water arduously pumped from scattered wells. Do you ration water such that everyone gets equal amounts or such that those sweating the most get the most.

Solve this dilemma accounting for the fractal parameters that go into it, and you'll have a utopia.

by Workaccount2

12/6/2025 at 2:22:00 PM

> balancing self optimization and social optimization

A person in a society has a right to the minimum of essential ordinary resources (food, shelter, clothing) to function as a general matter. (We have a right to pursue other goods, and in some cases a right to them once had, but we cannot say we have a right to them per se and before the fact. We have to be careful to distinguish between the two, as undisciplined and entitled people consumed by appetite tend to be unprincipled and like to inflate the list of “essentials” in self-serving ways. There’s certainly a pathology of envy at work as well, and we should in no way naturalize envy.)

In a situation of scarcity where there isn’t enough for everyone (which does not apply to the developed world), there is no solution that could satisfy that right universally. There is therefore no injustice committed when such basic resources are not distributed accordingly. Whoever gets their share gets it; whoever doesn’t simply doesn’t. You would expect competition here. Now, you could be charitable and self-sacrificial and give up your own share for another, but you have no such obligation to do so, and thus no one has the right to your share. Such charity would be an extraordinary act that transcends mere justice. It is entirely voluntary, even if heroic.

> and you'll have a utopia

Well no, you wouldn’t. This is the fallacy of consumerism and homo economicus. Even if everyone were rich, you would still have plenty of misery. The idea that human well-being is rooted in mere consumption - full stop - is at the root of so many ills. There is no well-being without virtue.

by lo_zamoyski

12/6/2025 at 1:39:18 PM

More like most people are dragging a cruise ship through a desert while being baited with the possible opportunity to belong to those enjoying the endless buffets and on-board water park.

This whole "should we ration so everybody gets some" is complete BS. There is an abundance of resources that are concentrated to a few and the rest made to suffer. We don't have to ration, we have to prevent the greedy from hogging it all. It's quite the opposite.

by r0ckarong

12/8/2025 at 4:58:20 PM

Funny how the choice of an analogy can set bounds to the set of accepted solutions.

Instead of trudging through the desert, or escaping a sinking ship, or surviving in a dog eat dog jungle, I prefer to compare modern society with a large boarding house, where every one has to cooperate a bit to make it work reasonably well.

A poltical philosopher from the XXth century once wrote: "At the end of the day, all we are trying to achieve is a basic level of decency, for which all that's required from citizens is the simple politeness commonly found in any boarding house."

Maybe it's not an optimization problem?

by rixed

12/6/2025 at 1:30:44 PM

> Solve this dilemma accounting for the fractal parameters that go into it, and you'll have a utopia.

Progressive tax on income

Progressive wealth tax

Universal basic income

Universal healthcare

Housing as a human right

Done

by ath3nd

12/6/2025 at 3:06:50 PM

Then who pumps the well?

by Workaccount2

12/8/2025 at 12:13:57 PM

Progressive taxes just mean that at the highest levels more income is going to redistribution. At all other levels there is still incentive to work.

by voisin

12/6/2025 at 4:33:50 PM

[dead]

by ath3nd

12/6/2025 at 1:14:56 PM

We are optimizing society for some human flourishing.

by candiddevmike

12/6/2025 at 1:20:05 PM

It’s hard to believe that even the billionaires are flourishing.

Musk certainly doesn’t seem to be a poster child for eudaimonia, being allegedly addicted to drugs.

by TimorousBestie

12/6/2025 at 1:25:49 PM

Anyone who makes like 100 million dollars and thinks to themselves "this isn't enough money to stop working and just enjoy life" has something seriously wrong with them. The billionaire class will never be happy, and it's time for society to stop letting these loonies ruin society to satisfy their insanity.

by gtowey

12/6/2025 at 1:29:33 PM

I think it is far to keep working if you love what you are doing. To filter, there should be an absolute cap on wealth at a few hundred million dollars. This would eliminate the incentive to manipulate politics in favour of yourself, but if you want to keep working you should be doing it for society via charity or taxes on anything additional that is earned.

Have a nice ceremony and present a medal for winning capitalism.

by voisin

12/6/2025 at 1:35:14 PM

>To filter, there should be an absolute cap on wealth at a few hundred million dollars.

One million dollars and not a penny more. Enough for most people to live comfortably, but not enough to buy governments, or for the upper classes to never need to work again to maintain their lifestyle and privilege.

No human being needs or deserves a hundred million dollars.

by krapp

12/7/2025 at 9:22:47 AM

I agree with you in principle here, but to play devils advocate, $1,000,000 isn't a whole lot of money. A worker will make around that much at $25,000 a year over 40 years. If we have to keep money/capitalism, the limit should probably be around 10-15 million. That's still pretty high, but not egregious. Give or take ~40yrs on a high FAANG salary ($375k/yr). Still firmly upper middle class IMO.

by tyami94

12/7/2025 at 9:56:18 AM

I don't mean earnings over a lifetime or career, but currently. A worker making $25,000 a year will still probably never see a million dollars regardless of the limit. Maybe everything above that is taxed 100%. I don't know.

But the point is kind of to eliminate the upper classes and scale the economy back into the reach of most people. So there would be no FAANG salaries. The cost of everything (healthcare, education, housing) would go down. It would place a hard limit on political influence that isn't too far out of reach of current Congressional salaries and would probably limit pork barrel politics and insider trading as well. It would end inherited wealth and maybe even limit the length of copyright.

That's an admittedly naive and utopian view and I'll admit there are bound to be complexities and externalities I'm not taking into account because I'm not an economist. But it's either that or we seize the means of production and put the rich to the guillotines until the sewers choke on their blood. And then something something luxury space communism.

by krapp

12/6/2025 at 1:34:46 PM

I know a guy who has a few millions that he earned while being an executive of a startup that was bought.

Some of his friends are disappointed in him because he works as a dev in a huge company and now "sits on his millions".

by whynotmaybe

12/6/2025 at 1:23:20 PM

He can retire whenever he wants.

by daymanstep

12/6/2025 at 1:33:14 PM

That's the crazy part. The people at the top seem to think they're better off if they can get another billion in the bank, regardless of the impact on the rest of society. But they, too, live in that same society that they are destroying.

They seem to think it's better to be a king in the Middle Ages than just a regular rich person in modern society. They forget that the lives of kings in the Middle Ages were absolutely terrible.

by InsideOutSanta

12/6/2025 at 1:24:32 PM

The purpose of capitalism is the flourishing of the capitalist classes.

The labor classes only need to be maintained like machines or draft animals, kept just alive and well enough to afford the rent on their lives so they can continue to create value.

The collective reactions to this aren't mental illness, they're trauma responses. Capitalism is accelerating towards its final form and the shock is giving people PTSD.

by krapp

12/6/2025 at 1:29:57 PM

Billionaires are a convenient distraction for the upper middle class.

The wealthiest group of people (on the whole) is the 70-95th percentile.

If we were to have the toppling of "the rich" that brought about meaningful change to the "poor", it would necessarily include the toppling of the ~$200k income households.

by Workaccount2

12/6/2025 at 1:45:09 PM

Did you perhaps respond to the wrong comment? I didn’t say anything about toppling the rich or whatever.

by TimorousBestie

12/6/2025 at 3:40:00 PM

Not even casually?

by hackable_sand

12/6/2025 at 1:23:22 PM

I'd dispute the 'almost'.

by vixen99

12/6/2025 at 1:37:24 PM

It's just common sense that things would not be geared toward the patient's best outcome.

It's easier (read: cheaper) for the broken NHS and cash strapped government to shovel pills than it is to get someone to revamp their life.

Imagine the alternative cost of talking therapies for the NHS. There are three year waiting lists for them already.

Depression usually occurs for a causal reason, it just may not have been found for the individual yet. It could be poor diet, lack of exercise, excessive escapism as a response to unprocessed trauma etc. Ultimately though these causes require the patient to exert effort toward improving their life, and so they have to have willpower and motivation.

Thankfully exercise can now be prescribed by doctors in the UK!

by echelon_musk

12/6/2025 at 12:54:29 PM

Sometimes, you can't tell the severity of someone's needs until they're already dead. We should err towards trusting patients, and informed consent.

> Minesh Patel, associate director of policy and influencing at mental health charity Mind, said there was "no credible evidence" that mental health problems were being over-diagnosed.

> "What we do know though is that the number of people experiencing mental health problems has increased, with 1 in 5 adults now living with a common mental health condition according to the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey," he said.

In an inflationary time, with shrinking social mobility and career prospects, where no one can predict what 5 years from now will look like, and no one can afford to start a family (even more so in places like the U.S.), I don't know why this is such a challenging sentiment for some to wrap their heads around. Of course distress is on the rise.

by functionmouse

12/6/2025 at 1:19:13 PM

I wonder if we are measuring, and therefore concentrating upon, things that turn out to be only incidental to how much we, or perhaps some of us, feel stress.

by dent9876543

12/6/2025 at 12:59:17 PM

I agree that mental health conditions probably are overdiagnosed and overdiagnosis of this kind is genuinely harmful in many cases (via nocebo effect).

But equally I do think it's true that there really are more people with mental health conditions, largely because:

* life is genuinely worse today than it was 20 years ago, mostly because of technology

* the excessive amount of screen time that the average person experiences is fundamentally harmful to the natural balance of neurotransmitters in the brain

by oncallthrow

12/6/2025 at 1:26:53 PM

> life is genuinely worse today than it was 20 years ago, mostly because of technology

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Almost everything today in absolute terms is better than 20 years ago, even more so outside the developed world.

What specifically today is worse than 20 years ago?

by qeternity

12/6/2025 at 1:46:29 PM

To quote one of my favorite movies: “In prison I learned that everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality... but the perception of reality”

We are much more constantly aware of the chaos of our world through social media. And in regards to mental illness, perception is reality.

That and of course, housing prices. Jebus, 20 years ago I paid $400 per month for a studio apartment in the downtown of a major city.

I do find this an interesting retort though. I would argue that if a few numbers go one way, and broad sentiment goes another way, things _have_ gotten worse. Like this whole argument on “life’s gotten worse” is inherently subjective so subjective measures have more validity.

by techblueberry

12/6/2025 at 1:41:04 PM

I’m 20 years older than I was in 2005. My kids moved out of state, and I barely get to see them. My hip hurts most of the time.

Of course I’m joking, but people do generally look back fondly on their youth. I think that’s a big reason for the perception that everything is awful now compared to the recent past.

by onionisafruit

12/6/2025 at 1:41:24 PM

Housing costs, social life (2005 is pre-iPhone), the value of an education, future outlook for careers/jobs, the mere existence of certain jobs pre-AI (i.e. writing), political polarization, to name a few off the top of my head.

by keiferski

12/6/2025 at 1:35:56 PM

To take the example of a minor little necessity like shelter, housing affordability is far worse today than it was 20 years ago, despite the fact that we were near the peak of a huge credit-driven housing bubble at that time.

by clanky

12/6/2025 at 1:09:09 PM

I don’t think life is generally worse than 20 years ago. Sure some things are tougher and it depends on your class how much you feel the stress - but looking at most metrics like child mortality, literacy, starvation and people dying in armed conflicts those improved compared to 20 years ago. Sure for some there is a recent change (most notably war in Europe and genocide in Gaza) - but overall it’s still positive.

That might not be true for the USA but overall it is.

What I think is a big cause for my generation (gen-x) is that we were promised this “perfect” harmonious world beginning of the 90s/00s with all kinds of tech marvels and no more wars and oppression and freedom and abundance for everyone.

Waking up to the reality of the human condition hasn’t been easy for that generation.

by sallveburrpi

12/6/2025 at 1:24:09 PM

There are also other factors that are not easily quantifiable, even though they might be more important: deep connections with other humans, supportive local communities, finding meaning in something outside of yourself, feeling connected to your vocation etc.

Byung-Chul Han would have a lot to say on this matter.

I would argue that by those measures, we are worse than let's say 50y ago.

by endorphine

12/6/2025 at 4:22:26 PM

I wasn’t alive 50 years ago so I can’t really compare. I would say however that not being dead, mutilated or starving is more important than deep connections with other humans.

I do get your point that many people feel this has been eroded by social media and online culture.

However it’s a tiny blip and I think in 5-10 years we will see the terminally online years (~2016-2030) as a weird period in history.

Of course this is highly subjective and depends a lot on your age and where in the world you live as well…

by sallveburrpi

12/6/2025 at 1:26:52 PM

Materially, most places in the world are better off than 20 years ago, or at least haven't worsened.

But emotionally, people now inhabit virtual places full of relentless negativity. That is the problem.

by inglor_cz

12/6/2025 at 4:24:21 PM

I agree that it’s a problem but it’s largely self-inflicted — you can just turn of the screen and go outside at any time.

It may sound strange but it’s that easy

by sallveburrpi

12/6/2025 at 5:23:37 PM

Yes, but as a general attitude, this is unrealistic, like ignoring the effects of drugs because they are voluntary. All these things (food, substances, sex, social media, etc) exist on an invisible spectrum of willpower vs circumstances for each individual. In practice, there's some subjective line in that spectrum across which society can't afford to just say "it's your fault, so I don't care" (though wealthy/isolated people can!).

by happytoexplain

12/7/2025 at 1:11:17 PM

Then we need to solve the problem through regulation. But just as with drugs we (not as single persons but as society) have decided that profits for some wealthy individuals are more important.

But as an individual you can just choose not to participate in social media, I wasn’t trying to invent some magic general attitude that solves all problems.

Also not sure if there is a “single” solution even possible, there is a lot more nuance and complexity to it.

by sallveburrpi

12/6/2025 at 1:21:35 PM

The "problem" is that it's all comparative, even if in absolute terms you are right - life is undeniably better than it used to be by every metric.

But to give you an example - my grandma had 8 siblings, out of which only 4 survived into adulthood. They mostly died before even turning 1, the typical "one day he was fine, the next day he turned purple and died, the nearest doctor was 2 hours away if your neighbour let you borrow a horse cart, so that's just what it was" case. Her father and her uncle were taken into Auschwitz and miraculously returned but never wanted to talk about the horrors they have seen while there. For the rest of her life she endured living under communism, seeing her peers in other countries have access to riches she could only dream of.

So now when you talk to her, how can you blame her for thinking that kids nowadays are spoiled, if they have everything provided for them, they have never experienced physical violence of any kind, but they are all depressed and sad about life being shit and saying how it was better in the good old days.

Like, from her perspective, it's impossible to understand.

But also, from the kids perspectives nowadays, all they know is a world where the "old" people have houses, jobs, stable incomes, and they cannot even hope for any of it. 50 year mortgages, 700 job applications with no interview, social media blasting images of a life that they know they can't ever have.....of course they are depressed. Just showing them stats that say "you live better, comfier, safer andd healthier lives than pretty much anyone else ever in the history of humanity" is not going to help if all they know is how much "worse" they have it than the people who came before them.

by gambiting

12/6/2025 at 2:11:24 PM

I think what definitely has improved, is the survival. We are less likely to starve, die in infancy / childhood, have longer life expectancy, etc. In the past there were also stresses. But I think the stresses were different then. They were less chronic and were more occasional instead (although probably more intense). However, after an acute stress you had a lot of time to recover. Evolutionary speaking, our brains have been adapted for that. It was necessary for our survival.

However, nowadays the stresses are different, they are more chronic / frequent. You have less time to recover from them. This is partially the result of our more complex and fast paced society / economy. Our brains are not well adapted for the modern work / educational environments and to the stresses associated with them, despite they are usually milder in intensity. Today's stress is more like to death by a thousand small cuts. Nowadays people have more anxiety, depression and suicidality. Here is a good video that talks about the modern stress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo1A45ShcMo .

by senfiaj

12/6/2025 at 1:50:45 PM

I actually think the social media factor is the biggest reason...we can now compare ourselves to a much, much large circle which makes our relative standing seem much worse. I think relative standing affects our happiness much more than absolute. From a mate competition standpoint, that actually makes logical sense.

by frankc

12/6/2025 at 4:31:18 PM

Participating in social media is a choice. I get that it’s an unpopular opinion it you can really keep it to a minimum and still interact with people. Of course I’m not a teenager anymore so it might be more pressure for them.

by sallveburrpi

12/6/2025 at 5:02:40 PM

Well, but so is smoking cigarettes, drinking or gambling. As a society we recognize that those vices are both an individual choice and that some people really really really struggle with them. So again, as society we try to put at least some disincentives to all of those activities, while not outright forbidding them.

by gambiting

12/6/2025 at 1:26:53 PM

Throughout time, people have complained that technology is ruining the world. Before AI it was the internet, and before that it was TV, nuclear power, and so on.

The quoted GP in the headline is correct. Life is just stressful. Previous generations understood this more, but my peers (Millennials) have an annoying tendency to complain that things are worse now than they ever have been, and their ADHD/anxiety is related to how "the world is now." It's BS. And it robs them of agency. Constant "happiness" should not be the goal, and the successful people Millennials admire are all living with stress and anxiety. It is normal.

by turnsout

12/6/2025 at 1:55:00 PM

> Throughout time, people have complained that technology is ruining the world. Before AI it was the internet, and before that it was TV, nuclear power, and so on.

What if throughout time they have been right ? Any proof thst while tech brought longer lifes and more material wealth, we haven’t just spiraled down for a while in term of mental wellbeing, sense of meaning, sense of belonging etc ?

That’s obviously not true of every piece of tech (I.e. it’s hard to imagine how antibiotics or replacing a coal plant by a nuclear power plant could have negative impact of people’s mental wellbeing) but it could be true about technology in general. It’s not a stretch to believe that technologies that radically transform what a day in the life of a human being looks like, can also have an impact on said human beings life.

Our bodies and mind, have been finetuned for living in nature and hunting gathering, with a small group consisting of our families and friends for millions of years. Now we live a sedentary life, for many away from family and without any sense of community, in large, noisy, devoid of nature cities having to do day in day out the same job that is more and more compartimentalized and less and less concrete and meaningful, only to go home and sit in front of a tv to be bombarded by ads trying to induce fomo, or god forbid, doom scrolling on tik tok for hours.

If it just so happened that those two modes of life generate the exact same levels and qualities of stress in our little brains, that would be quite the coincidence.

Look at every stat around mental health: anxiety, depression, sense of meaning etc. They are all getting worse over decades. And if you think it’s caused by people just complaining more than before, look at how the rate of people willing to kill themselves, that’s the ultimate truth. All worsening.

by sailingparrot

12/6/2025 at 2:49:25 PM

If you continue this argument ad infinitum, you'll eventually conclude that agriculture was our first mistake, and we should have just stayed in the cave.

Like, how is this line of reasoning constructive?

I guarantee our hunter-gatherer ancestors felt all the same emotions—burnout, comparison, envy, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, hopelessness. The setting has changed, but our brains have not changed that much.

by turnsout

12/6/2025 at 3:34:36 PM

> I guarantee our hunter-gatherer ancestors felt all the same emotions—burnout, comparison, envy, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, hopelessness.

Yes they felt all the same emotions. You absolutely cannot guarantee they felt them in the same proportions thought.

> our brains have not changed that much.

That is the point: our brains have not changed and is still evolving at the speed of gene mutations. Our environment though is changing magnitudes faster than before.

> how is this line of reasoning constructive?

This is not trying to be constructive, just trying to understand the human condition. We probably have no choice but to learn to deal with it, that doesn’t mean technology has no adverse impact.

by sailingparrot

12/6/2025 at 4:34:20 PM

Friend, hunter-gatherers felt more existential dread than you do, because 50% of their kids died, and they themselves would be lucky to live to the ripe old age of 40.

Every generation in history has felt that things used to be better and they got the short end of the stick. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and World War II. My parents lived through the cold war, Watergate and Vietnam. Millennials have phones that they like too much, and it's slightly harder to buy a house, and they feel like no one has ever endured this much hardship.

We need to grow up. "Too much Instagram" is not remotely on the same level as "we need to hide in the basement during air raids."

PS, I don't buy any argument that there's more depression now than there was at an earlier point in history, because psychology does not have the most stellar track record when it comes to scientific rigor. I just don't trust any measure that's over 20 years old.

by turnsout

12/6/2025 at 5:46:06 PM

Sure, I'ld rather be doomscrolling on tiktok than being stuck for 4 years in trenches in France during WW1, we are talking about larger trend across time though.

> I just don't trust any measure that's over 20 years old.

Then take psychological measures that are 20 years old or less, they all go in the same direction.

Or if you don't trust psychology, take suicide rate, pretty hard to miscount, and is not subject to much change in how people self-report whether or not they killed themselves.

You seem to be conflating how you think people ought to feel given their privileged conditions versus how they actually happen to feel.

by sailingparrot

12/8/2025 at 9:37:28 AM

For reasons that don't matter, I've had to live with a 25-yo since summer that has ADHD and anxiety diagnosed by a therapist. Two main issues I see in her behavior: - She changed therapist twice until she heard what she was looking for. She said she was looking for a compatible "therapist". - The fact that she was diagnosed was a relief to her because now she can just offload any responsibility. Forgot to do something? It's normal, that's my ADHD. Not in the mood to go and work tomorrow? that's my anxiety kicking-in.

There's just no hardship anymore and her life is not even that stressful. It's just easy to come with that and give excuses.

The issue is: I want to be sympathetic to her condition and help, but it's really hard to don't sound like I'm judging. I can't just challenge a behavior because she is already doing the best she can. It's like there's an invisible ceiling.

PS: I'm only 12 years older than her.

by nunorbatista

12/8/2025 at 5:08:33 PM

I've seen similar behavior. I can understand that the relief that comes with having finaly a label put on the box one feels trapped into; But then the goal should be to climb out of that box. A diagnosis is only good if it helps fight the condition, after all.

I believe the issue is more broad than that though. I believe the issue comes from the very strong belief in our modern world that our behavior, our ideas and moods are what we are, what we have always been and always will be. That comes with our global theory of mind that one's character is given once and for all, from birth to death. I insist that this is a belief that is not universal, for some other cultures ideas and moods are transient external inhabitants of our minds. And indeed, people do change along their lifetime, and sometimes immensely; once you have witnessed these changes a few times you start to realize how even conditions that are usually considered impossible to cure, can actually be fixed.

by rixed

12/8/2025 at 7:21:19 PM

the issue comes from the very strong belief in our modern world that our behavior, our ideas and moods are what we are, what we have always been and always will be. That comes with our global theory of mind that one's character is given once and for all, from birth to death. I insist that this is a belief that is not universal

i would go a step further and argue that this belief is simply false or bad. it traps us, and makes us unable to grow. we should aim to reject this idea with a much effort as we can.

i have commented that about this before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44361344 this belief is used to excuse bad behavior. it also takes away agency and hope from those who want to change.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562701 human nature is often used as an excuse for bad behavior

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300344 we risk misusing this belief as an excuse not to support people to do better because we lack the belief that they even could do better

this last one is particularly concerning when it comes to an ADHD diagnosis. not that the diagnosis is wrong, but the diagnosis combined with the belief that we can't change. we need to change our attitude and trust that even a person with ADHD can improve. it's just harder. and ADHD diagnosis should guide us in how to best help that person. it should not be used as an excuse to give up.

by em-bee

12/8/2025 at 8:39:38 PM

I wholeheartedly agree; But I also understand why, to those failing to change (or to change as fast as they would want), it can sound patronizing to hear that "it's all about your mindset". It's important to start by acknowledging the circumstances that can make it hard to improve before encouraging someone to fight them.

It's not only about personality disorders by the way, as you said it also applies to behavior. I've seen people who were total sociopaths when young (incl jail time) turn into good members of society much later in life. And I don't want to advocate for leniency here, at the contrary I believe it's important to set the expectations straight otherwise it's easy to learn how to game the system.

I wish there were more movies/books showing how much people can change and what can shape those changes. There are a few, but that really goes against the flow of good vs evil in our tradtional story-telling.

by rixed

12/6/2025 at 1:18:28 PM

The title is kind of baiting junk takes and misses the nuance here. Life stressors can induce depression or symptoms of it. Medication has shown to improve these symptoms. It does make treating actual chronic pathological mental illness more difficult, because of the exact attitudes expressed here.

Hint: mental illness and life being stressful is often comorbid and causal.

by JohnMakin

12/6/2025 at 3:18:50 PM

You're missing the point.

There is a growing movement that says life is too easy nowadays and we're handicapping our ability to develop coping strategies.

Life is incredibly easy nowadays. We have more luxury and access to everything than we've ever bad. Crime is at all time lows. We're safer and have an incredible access to just about anything. This leads to self segregation and an atrophy of basic coping skills.

But the media convinces us of the opposite. People are told from birth that their lives are hard, the system is broken, etc. This conditions people to not bother. This atrophies skills or they never develop.

I recently read an article that something like 25% of Ivy league students have a "disability". They don't, but they think being depressed is a disability which enables them. The author made a good case that they were taking advantage of the system, which cheats themselves out of developing their skills. https://reason.com/2025/12/04/why-are-38-percent-of-stanford...

My friends sex addicts group has also touched on a similar thing lately: emotional comfort is not emotional maturity. People today segregate themselves from people to protect their emotions, then they wonder why they can't handle people who disagree with them. It's easy to avoid things.

The main thing I'm saying here is that today's modern life allows us to avoid things we don't like. This leads to a lack of development in many areas. Then we claim everyone is struggling. Then the media reinforces this.

Over time it can become difficult to gauge people's conditions and legitimacy of those conditions. therapist friend of mine and I talk about this a lot. "What's an actual condition and what do people think they have?" is a big issue in modern therapy. People Self-diagnose way too much nowadays. The media convinces everyone that they're broken.

My life experience also mimics this. In college I thought I had crippling social anxiety. Turns out I just needed to be around people more to develop my abilities. I forced myself to work customer service jobs and voila, after a year or two I became a social person. My stutter went away and I became comfortable in groups.

Our perspective is fucked and it creates a cycle of apathy/complacency. Then everyone is "depressed" because they can't handle their latte having soy instead of cows's milk. This is hyperbole but it isn't untrue.

by chneu

12/8/2025 at 5:17:58 AM

> My life experience also mimics this. In college I thought I had crippling social anxiety. Turns out I just needed to be around people more to develop my abilities.

I don't understand why you think that the fact that exposure cured you means you didn't have social anxiety?

Exposure is something a therapist would suggest for social anxiety.

The issue seems to be that you think saying that someone has social anxiety means they are permanently broken (and maybe will give up trying to do anything about it?) but I'm not really sure where you got that idea from.

by resoluteteeth

12/6/2025 at 12:55:08 PM

I think people misunderstand stress and distress, where the latter is personally inflicted on you, like being abused by a family member. In general, I think experiences due to systemic issues are different from experiencing personal issues, i.e., someone targeting you with specific intent and focus to inflict emotional or physical harm on you.

Lived experiences can add to stress, but everyone has a stressful nature to their lived experiences, as this article is saying. Being in distress, where you’re the particular target of a person or a group, is different.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 1:00:56 PM

What happens when everyone feels they are being targeted (and has some justification, IMO), and so almost everyone is in distress?

But not one wants to acknowledge it, because it’s society doing it to itself?

by lazide

12/6/2025 at 1:33:30 PM

There’s a difference between feeling targeted, and being targeted in actuality. If you can’t tell the difference, then you’re not being targeted.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 1:35:12 PM

Who do you think isn’t being targeted by large scale manipulation attempts right now in the US?

Everyone can definitely tell. Even the cult followers. They just can’t get their heads out of their asses enough to do anything but follow with the manipulation, but it’s a very rare person indeed right now that is going ‘oh yeah, everything is actually fine’.

by lazide

12/6/2025 at 1:46:02 PM

Oh okay, that’s what you meant by “target”. I make two distinctions here from my understanding: 1) if group A targets group B, then that’s not a personal attack, but a social or system issue, which I would count as a source of stress, not distress. 2) If group A targets a person, then that is a personal attack, and not a social issue, which is a source of direct conflict, and therefore distress.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 1:49:43 PM

The beauty of social media is that individuals are being targeted effectively as part of group targeting between groups.

by lazide

12/6/2025 at 2:28:23 PM

That’s stress, not distress.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 2:44:21 PM

Potato potato.

by seba_dos1

12/6/2025 at 4:31:14 PM

Absolutely no way are people arguing here that being targeted for one's race, religion, sexuality etc, or being the personal victim of a targeted campaign of harassment and / or violence, is 'just as stressful and distressing' as being targeted by ads.

Surely I must be misunderstanding this thread.

by DontForgetMe

12/6/2025 at 5:29:54 PM

I do think being targeted for protected characteristics is stressful. But let’s examine two types of people: 1) a gay person with normal socioeconomic background, 2) a person with a normal socioeconomic background who becomes the target of group bullying.

Both people experience stress in their own way, only one of those people experiences distress due to a specific set of circumstances. Is the gay person’s lived experience of being discriminated against invalid? Of course not. Is it the same situation as the person who was the target of group bullying? Definitely not.

I am not trying to make any determinations about who has struggled the most, and is most deserving of sympathies. I am making a distinction between societal pressures and specific instances of harm.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 8:53:34 PM

...and I'm saying that it's a distinction without a difference for how it influences affected people.

by seba_dos1

12/6/2025 at 10:08:41 PM

You’re simply wrong, if you can’t tell the difference then you’re unqualified to even say anything on this. Not because you don’t have lived experience or something, but because you cannot use simple logic and reasoning.

by nis0s

12/7/2025 at 1:44:38 AM

No, you're simply focusing on the wrong things in the discussion's context. "There’s a difference between feeling targeted, and being targeted in actuality" - like, sure, obviously, there is a difference, they're distinct things. And it doesn't matter.

Now apply basic logic and reasoning to find out why.

by seba_dos1

12/7/2025 at 2:49:54 AM

Okay I did, now let’s enumerate some similarities and differences.

Here’s the setting: A is gay, and B is hetero. Both exist in a secular, democratic society where the majority religion has a damning view about being gay, but there are anti-discrimination laws in this society, and there’s a subculture that’s welcoming to gay people.

A lives a normal life, and has a mix of positive and negative experiences, but is otherwise never bullied, abused, harassed or emotionally or physically harmed on a personal level due to being gay, but has seen gay people be bullied and harmed on social media. A can move to a new town, and no one would know that A is gay, or maybe even care about that if they did find out because there are allies and other gay people. A can change jobs and not worry about being discriminated against because there are laws that protect against discrimination based on identity. A can make friends in A’s subculture or with allies.

B lives a normal life, but has an overwhelming negative experience when B starts getting bullied by C and D (two new people for this scenario). C and D take a personal interest in B, and want to make B’s life a living hell because B rubbed them the wrong way, let’s say. C and D use their network of friends to do the following: 1) they hack into B’s personal phone and computer to get private information, 2) they use that information to steal B’s secret cooking recipes and start selling a best selling chef’s book under their own names from those recipes, 3) they find out who are B’s friends or enemies, and use that information to either socially isolate B from their circle by saying socially negative things about B, or by using gossip from enemies to drive new people away from B, 4) they pretend to be “concerned citizens” and email B’s employers about B’s character, 5) every time B starts something new, they try to get into that new thing to undermine B, or somehow disadvantage B on a personal level, at the same time helping other people like B, 6) they use their network to spread gossip about B, and undermine B’s work or achievements. So B cannot make friends or relationships of any kind, and does not have a support network. B cannot find employment of the kind B likes, and cannot move to a new town because it won’t make a difference since B is being targeted on a personal level.

Now tell me, are these two circumstances the same? One is societal indifference/discrimination, and the other is targeted bullying, stalking and harassment. If you say, yes, then explain how.

If you don’t understand, then put this scenario in ChatGPT and ask who is experiencing more stress, or is it the same level of stress.

by nis0s

12/7/2025 at 3:51:57 AM

Putting the logical fallacies you just committed aside, now imagine that E is a schizophrenic who believes that everyone out there is conspired to bully, abuse, harass and emotionally or physically harm him due to being straight. E cannot make friends or relationships of any kind, does not have a support network, can't find employment, may receive some health care or not.

It really doesn't matter whether this feeling is imagined or not. Even merely a threat that never gets actualized may be enough of a stressor to cause serious issues.

by seba_dos1

12/7/2025 at 5:11:34 AM

I admit the scenario is contrived, but that’s to make a point. Feel free to construct your own scenario that’s not a non sequitur.

But the E scenario is also fallacious, doesn’t matter if E is schizophrenic if the conspiracy is real. Maybe E’s detractors would like others to think E is schizophrenic, or the symptoms they want to cast as schizophrenic are a stress response to the targeted harassment.

by nis0s

12/7/2025 at 5:24:59 AM

One could make a completely opposite point just by slightly editing your scenarios.

Make B be charming and charismatic enough that C and D's attempts get laughed off and backfire. Make A be so affected by having to live in secrecy that it puts a real strain on the relationship with the person they care about the most. Now surely it would be A who ends up under "more stress", right?

Except you can't even say that, because "level of stress" is not an objectively measurable quantity that exists somewhere in the environment. You can be stressed out by things I get excited about. Someone else will shrug out a risk that makes me terrified. You could be under distress because some lights have blinked too fast, yet it doesn't mean that these lights have targeted you with their harassment.

by seba_dos1

12/7/2025 at 7:14:04 PM

Sure, but what’s the point of these adjustments? You were making a false equivalency between two different circumstances, and saying that there’s effectively no difference between them. I presented a scenario where the difference between them is indisputable, that is person B has an objectively worse situation and potential outcome. Experiencing stress and being in distress are not the same. If you’re still having a hard time admitting this, then imagine you have a child. Which situation should that child live under, A’s or B’s?

by nis0s

12/7/2025 at 7:34:03 PM

If you still don't see the point of these adjustments, I'm afraid it may be beyond my abilities to teach you to see it. Each of the scenarios presented can lead to either experiencing stress or being in distress, ability to take it varies between individuals and there's no category of scenarios that always leads to "objectively worse situation" (whatever it means) as you're trying to present it, making it a distinction without a difference in this context as for whatever you'd try to argue, you can find an example from the other category that fulfills it too and that has potential to lead to the same outcomes when it comes to health.

by seba_dos1

12/7/2025 at 11:09:04 PM

I think some people fear that the political or social status of protected classes may diminish by admitting that someone could have a worse life than them despite not being of a protected class. It doesn’t diminish for me, so I have no problem saying that there could be instances where being a protected class isn’t as bad another circumstance for someone who isn’t such a person. It truly depends, everyone’s life is different, and there are indeed worse lives than others, even if it’s someone you normally wouldn’t consider as worse off.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 3:06:14 PM

It’s not the same thing as a different way to say the same thing if the implementation of two sources of conflict is different. One is a societal conflict, and the other is personal conflict.

by nis0s

12/6/2025 at 12:57:42 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

12/6/2025 at 1:13:31 PM

I've seen work environments that are chaotic, and people are expected to deliver things that they can't deliver without navigating and taming the chaos to do their bidding.

If course that's stressful. You can't expect individuals to tame the organization.

I think some parts of IT have deteriorated into anarchy with tyrannic leadership.

Sure, you can have anarchy. But then don't expect any particular timelines.

You can hire armies of people. But then don't expect one corner of the org to be able to deliver something that involves talking to everyone.

You can't have the cake and eat it too.

by strictfp

12/7/2025 at 8:43:37 AM

Neurosis (stress and depression) is the only human disease that its cutoff diagnostic criteria change (increase) through time in the last 100 years. The casual level of stress of a random person today would be insane for someone in the '50s. Especially, the stress of a teenager today is similar to a psychiatric hospital patient of the '50s.

The empirical criteria of depression, held by most health professionals, are influenced a lot by the mass trend. If all people are depressed (eg during a widespread economic crisis, loss of ambition, hope etc), like it happens today, then depression will tend to be mostly normal.

I believe today a large percentage of people suffer from an uncovered, untold stress and depression and we professionals must resist to accept this as normal. Depression is an unbearable but curable disease and is not like house prices/rents where we have to adapt and get accustomed to.

by tsoukase

12/6/2025 at 1:30:08 PM

Life being non-stop stressful for a majority of the population is not a personal illness, it's a societal illness. Although societal illness can definitely lead back to mental illness which is a very personal affliction.

I do agree that it shouldn't be the job of GPs to prescribe away mental illness though, any more than they should be telling you what eyeglasses to wear. Those jobs should go to psychiatrists and optometrists, respectively. The GP should merely refer you to the specialist.

It does beg the question though, since society is so clearly sick and appears to be getting worse in many countries, whose job is that to fix? The obvious answers are either "politicians" , or "all of us". But politicians seem just as afflicted as the rest, or even to be adding to the sickness in many cases. And saying we all need to come together to fix it might be a truism but is basically useless.

by esperent

12/6/2025 at 3:49:57 PM

The prescription here might be for people to be able to easily afford to live walkable to some of their family and friends.

Lots of things come from this: shared resources (less income need, less work stress), shared emotional support, shared childcare (less income need), etc.

Instead of single family homes (one family is not the atomic unit of the human species!) it should've been single community developments with 15 homes and a big shared backyard but still private for all the houses. And the landlord + all the tenants can select the residents based on their personal preferences and anyone can veto.

I think many challenges stem from the lack of this.

I don't know what the fix is though, because housing regulations seem difficult to change.

by cjbarber

12/6/2025 at 2:38:50 PM

Life is stressful (in some respects, overly so), but we’ve dealt with this for millennia by having a strong support system. Not to be reductive over the multitudes of problems people face today, but most can and should be solvable by having a good support system. Family and good friends with whom you can speak frankly can do wonders. It doesn’t solve the affordability or job problems, but having someone to talk to, someone that you can trust and has lived experience, can go a long way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve solved “problems” or at least lessened their impact, by consulting family and friends.

by stavarotti

12/6/2025 at 3:07:12 PM

Indeed. I think better "built environments that are conducive to community" are important, and can help things like this. ie things to reverse the "bowling alone" type trends.

by cjbarber

12/6/2025 at 3:27:25 PM

We live in a world where one text can end a friendship because one person can't handle any conflict. No wonder we lack community.

by chneu

12/6/2025 at 12:59:09 PM

Interesting perspective. There’s a real challenge in separating normal stress from something that needs intervention. The line isn’t always obvious.

by Simplita

12/6/2025 at 11:30:55 PM

Life expectancy for people with chronic stress is far lower. Stress is an excellent predictor of overall health+wellness.

by tkel

12/6/2025 at 1:21:15 PM

Life is so insane right now that mental illness is the only rational response.

by gtowey

12/6/2025 at 1:30:41 PM

Yeah, I think it's very easy to say that "life being stressful is not an illness." In reality, life is often stressful in ways that can very much lead to mental illness, particularly in a society that drastically values corporate success over human well-being.

by InsideOutSanta

12/6/2025 at 3:58:51 PM

[flagged]

by lostmsu

12/6/2025 at 8:45:27 PM

This seems like a bad faith comment.

If you truly wanted data, you could so easily Google (as I did), and find the below sources that back up the comment you're responding to. There are myriad papers and sources.

But I think your comment doesn't seek insight so much as it seeks to discredit and dismiss... in, frankly, a pretty lazy attempt. If you're going to be dismissive, put some effort in, man! ;)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10710064/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5976254/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5137920/

https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/02/11/chronic-stress-predispo...

by Esophagus4

12/6/2025 at 8:59:20 PM

[flagged]

by lostmsu

12/6/2025 at 9:09:11 PM

I only regret that I have but one downvote to give.

by Esophagus4

12/7/2025 at 1:20:43 AM

[dead]

by Craighead

12/6/2025 at 6:43:43 PM

We live in perhaps the most peaceful and prosperous moment in all of human history. You most likely live in one of the top 5 wealthiest nations in the world (probably the top one).

by mvdtnz

12/6/2025 at 10:31:19 PM

I keep hearing this from people who love charts but in the US I see the rate of homelessness rapidly increasing, more people ending up in medical debt, and groups of poorly trained militarized thugs storming neighborhoods to disappear people without trial. So yeah, Bezos and Zuckerberg are putting up great numbers but it's kind of crazy to paint prosperity and peace with such a large brush. It my travels it seems that a lot of less wealthy nations have a better quality of life despite the numbers

by throwaway-11-1

12/7/2025 at 1:39:28 AM

The poverty rate in USA is consistently in decline for several decades. Also, when I say "we" I don't mean America. I mean all of us.

by mvdtnz

12/7/2025 at 9:14:51 AM

That's because the data is inherently flawed. The poverty line this year is $15,650 for an individual. That's not poverty, that's destitution. From personal experience, living in WV, you cannot survive on that amount of money without either sleeping under a bridge/in a car or dumpster-diving/shoplifting all of your meals.

Folks say just get on food stamps or medicaid, but it's not that simple. At that level of destitution you may not have a phone, an address, basic ID/documentation, or even a means of getting to the office to apply. Means-testing makes the process so drawn-out and convoluted, that many folks (including myself) don't even bother, because there are more immediate things to worry about (once again speaking from experience).

After years of destitution, I finally managed to make a bit more than twice the FPL and I was still struggling (but significantly better off). Just recently I lost that job for reasons outside my control and after my unemployment runs out I'm back where I started. Everyone I know has a similar story. Any data that says that poverty is decreasing in the US is detached from reality.

by tyami94

12/8/2025 at 8:32:41 PM

Thanks for your story and I'm sorry it's been such a struggle to stay on your feet. I agree that too many people never make it outside of their social and economic bubble and never bother to see what reality is like for most Americans.

by gtowey

12/6/2025 at 1:51:07 PM

Global poverty at 100-year lows, US murder rate half the 90s, you’re more likely to die from obesity than starvation or violence. Objectively the cushiest moment in human history.

Yet “mental illness is the only rational response.”

Happiness = Reality − Expectations

Most of material Reality is fine. The part of Reality that’s broken is spiritual/emotional. The expectations causing unhappiness aren’t for more money or stuff, they’re subconscious, millions of years deep, baked into the species of tribe, offspring, transcendence, cosmic order.

Leftism spent half a century screaming that those instincts are bigotry, that family is oppression, that religion is a mental illness, that wanting roots or rituals or a legacy is fascism.

You can’t propagandize the human soul out of its own operating system. The subconscious still demands what it demanded in 200,000 BC. We just demolished every institution that used to answer the call and replaced them with therapy, porn, and corporate pride slogans.

That’s the real insanity. Not climate change or late-stage capitalism. The soul shows up for duty and the building’s condemned.

by alchemist1e9

12/6/2025 at 2:07:29 PM

> Global poverty at 100-year lows, US murder rate half the 90s, you’re more likely to die from obesity than starvation or violence. Objectively the cushiest moment in human history.

Averages are just that - averages. They say nothing about any given individual’s experience. And probabilities aren’t assurances of a particular outcome. Just because the average person is more likely to face obesity than starvation doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people facing starvation in the world. Your argument is based on an incorrect use of statistics.

by baubino

12/6/2025 at 4:20:07 PM

We can use deciles and the story is the same. I was just keeping it simple and my use of statistics for my point is fine.

The bottom decile in all western countries has a objectively better material conditions yet I don’t dispute they may feel less “Happiness” which the formula explains and if you drill into the components of Reality which are causing the unhappiness and it’s absolutely non-material as I explained.

by alchemist1e9

12/6/2025 at 3:25:31 PM

Very well said, thank you for this. I would add though, that money (or lack thereof) causes unhapiness as well, because people want to live how "they" live on Instagram, and they can't.

by baal80spam

12/6/2025 at 4:21:35 PM

Instagram moved expectations up significantly for a large portion of global populations so yes what you say is absolutely true but isn’t the Reality part but the Expectations part of the Happiness formula.

by alchemist1e9

12/6/2025 at 2:05:50 PM

[flagged]

by heddelt

12/6/2025 at 3:10:15 PM

Hard disagree. I think we're convinced life is way harder than it is.

Life is fucking easy. One push ordering for almost anything. Cushy houses with hvac.

We make life hard by buying into the narrative that it's hard and we're all helpless. This cheats us out of our development and ability to handle real conflict.

by chneu

12/6/2025 at 7:27:30 PM

Have you asked your DoorDash or Uber driver how they feel about their future? How about the Amazon warehouse workers and UPS drivers who deliver a mountain of cheap imported goods to your door. Or maybe ask the Walmart cashier if thier current and future projects in life give them a warm fuzzy feeling.

This easy life you describe requires mountains of people to support it, who themselves are mostly being crushed by it.

by gtowey

12/6/2025 at 7:45:51 PM

I haven’t come across those profiles of people talking about being miserable but somehow I have heard many entitled upper middle class white women claiming those people are miserable. Actually the blue collar males I know are mostly happy people! And the delivery workers I interact with often smile quiet a bit.

by alchemist1e9

12/7/2025 at 4:46:11 AM

I mean, you can be happy and then not be able to retire.

Also a lot of low-paying jobs are customer service in some way. Smiling is sort of a prerequisite for getting paid.

by array_key_first

12/6/2025 at 8:14:33 PM

Not Doordash, but I often ask my Lyft drivers.

Like for anything in life, it depends on the market you're in, and where you are situated on the acumen distribution (low acumen drivers don't make a lot, while high acumen ones do). Narrative thinking likes cherry picking the worst cases and then representing those stories as normal. But reality is always a bit more complicated.

Many Lyft drivers are immigrants, either between jobs, or are doing it full time. I don't directly ask them how much they make, but I tell them in my homeland of Canada, if you're on welfare and disability, you make CAD$x and it's good enough money for a single person. Most Lyft drivers are like: "that's way, way less than what I make doing this." (some tell me they make US$3-4k/month, working 6 day weeks. This might sound like too little, but realize that not all COL is the same, and for an immigrant, this is a great gig with optionality -- you can always turn off the app).

Then you might say, oh, they're blind to the depreciation hit their cars are taking. But good, high acumen, Lyft drivers often drive second-hand Priuses which depreciate slowly and have great mileage, and they track expenses like a hawk. If you go to the Lyft subreddit, good drivers know all the tricks -- optimize for high yield windows, avoid dead miles, avoid blind quests, and the cap hours deliberately. It's the ones with less acumen that drive a new car with low MPG on financing, and don't optimize.

So don't generalize and catastrophize (catastrophizing amplifies depression -- in cognitive behavioral therapy, they teach you to guard against that). Just stop it. Everything in life is a distribution.

I'm not saying driving a Lyft is aspirational, but for some immigrants who are doing it to support their family, it's a less-bad option than many others.

I even had a few drivers pushing me to get married (I'm single) because they said, once they get home from a day of driving, they get to go back to family. "It's less lonely," they tell me. In some ways they're happier than I am, even though I make nominally more than them.

by wenc

12/8/2025 at 9:01:32 PM

> Just stop it.

Has this approach of ordering people to feel or think a certain way ever actually worked for you? Do you think this is a good way to have a respectful discussion with someone?

> some tell me they make US$3-4k/month

So let's run with that number, say 3.5k/month average. That's $42,000/year: They're independent contractors, so they have independent employment tax which is about 2x of standard w-2 taxes. A quick online calculator tells me that would amount to 8,370.90 in my state. The lions share is federal medicare and social security tax though; state tax on this is practically nothing here.

* They must have a car. Quick search says a 2024 prius is around $25k. Monthly payments at 9.6% (prime rate for a used car, all new immigrants start out with perfect credit, right?) at 60 months is around $550. Let's say insurance is $100. Ignore fuel and maintenance for now.

* So now we have 2800/month after taxes and 650/month just to work. The remaining 2150 needs to cover everything else. Food, housing, utilities.

* This doesn't even consider health insurance. Let's hope they qualify for a subsidized plan, because they sure can't cover it on this income. I guess they have the "don't get sick" plan that's so popular these days.

Oh and all this for working 6 days a week. Which if that's the case they're not clocking 8 hours days. Even conservatively you should assume that's 10 hours a day.

And on top of all that you said they're supporting a family?! So 3 or 4 people on 2150/month?

All that so they can work 60 hour weeks, barely see their wife and kids, and be one accident or medical emergency away from total financial ruin.

But you're right, they're rich in spirit and after all, isn't that what really matters? They really do have it so much better than you.

by gtowey

12/6/2025 at 8:58:47 PM

I make $400k/yr at faang, I don’t have a cushy house with hvac. My house doesn’t even have insulation. I can’t even park on the street in the city I’m residing in because it’s illegal.

Imagine how much worse it is for people who don’t make as much as I do.

by bradlys

12/6/2025 at 1:18:16 PM

Maybe, just maybe life has gotten legitimately more stressful? Like, even my parents' generation wasn't forced to move away from family and friends (aka their support network) just for career. And on top of that, a single income was enough to afford a decently sized home, stay-at-home spouse, car and children.

Compare that to today: more and more adults have to live with their parents due to cost of living, you need until age 23 until you earn your own money because you're effectively worthless without an academic degree, you get saddled with debt from acquiring said degree, when you finally have a job it's usually impossible to afford even a run-down slumlord shack unless you have two (or, worse, three) incomes... and we never had the time to actually reset after the polycrises - 2007 ff financial crisis, euro crisis, refugee crisis (in Europe), refugee crisis 2 (in Europe), Trump 1, Covid, Russian war, Trump 2...

Particularly the fact that our generation can't rely on our parents and friend networks for support any more is the largest factor to blame. And obviously, earlier generations were significantly underdiagnosed, partially because medicine literally didn't know better, partially because their parents beat them into submission with sheer violence.

by mschuster91

12/6/2025 at 3:30:42 PM

I'm not disagreeing but I do want to point out this is the exact thinking that many people think is responsible for the apathy/victim mindset.

Perspective is important. Does life happen to you or are you in control of your life? Are you a victim or do you take control?

The idea that life sucks isn't new. It's been around forever.

The difference is today we have a global media that reinforces this idea to sell us products. A victim is a much more lucrative customer than someone who is empowered because they can be convinced they aren't capable of doing things themselves. Ever notice the "life is hard, pay us to take this off your hands" advertising?

Start looking for the victim mindset or the "life happens to me, I'm powerless" mindset in people. You'll see it all over. Then look at people who are busy and doing things and generally happy, they don't have this mindset. They're more mindful, is one way of looking at it.

If ya wanna be a sad sack victim, go for it, but don't be surprised when happiness passes you by because you never bothered to experience adversity and don't have the skills to navigate life or the ability to inconvenience yourself. There is a lot of happiness to be had, just gotta go find it or make it happen. One person's great experience is another person's bad time, perspective is what changes that. If your perspective is victimhood then you're never gonna have a good time. You're always gonna think you're depressed if that's your perspective on life.

by chneu

12/7/2025 at 5:01:22 AM

The problem with internalized locus of control is that it can come with blame if done wrong. If you're in complete control of your life, and your life happens to suck at the moment, are you a loser?

Moreover, what of those retail workers? Are they all lazy losers and we shouldn't bother with them? Or are they, partially, victims of circumstance?

Before I got cancer, I used to believe everything happened for a reason. I realize now that that belief can be very toxic. Why punish myself? Thats a choice.

That doesn't mean we need to be doomer. But we need to recognize some things are not in our control, and some things aren't even in anyone's control. And we shouldn't feel guilty about needing help, and we shouldn't punish ourselves out of some pursuit for bootstrap virtue.

by array_key_first

12/6/2025 at 3:37:28 PM

> Perspective is important. Does life happen to you or are you in control of your life? Are you a victim or do you take control?

Given that a lot of today's trouble are effectively caused by our economic systems being utterly rigged and heading for a hard crash - the former. Elections increasingly don't matter in practice, because fringes aside it's all the same shit just in different degrees of brown.

The only way left to take meaningful control is violence, which is consequently what we're increasingly seeing everywhere - be it escalating protests (e.g. BLM), individual murders (Luigi, Kirk) or executive overreach (ICE, police violence in general).

And that's not just a contemporary thing. Historically, the scale and brutality of violence has closely correlated with economic and wealth disparities - the French Revolution, the violent strikes around the turn of the 20th century and the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany are all directly linked to too few people becoming way too rich while the masses struggled to survive.

by mschuster91

12/6/2025 at 1:35:32 PM

True.

Also, people might not be ready for this but, being able to focus intensely on one thing while being easily distracted when forced to do menial tasks is not a disorder.

by moralestapia

12/6/2025 at 12:22:59 PM

Diffrent times diffrent problems ,i think this Word say evrythink . We need to help people which have physical problems .

by bluesky19283746

12/6/2025 at 1:27:47 PM

It's also entirely possible that life is indeed just messed up in a way that human brains didn't evolve for and can't deal with - all the societal changes, breakdowns of close relationships and communities (e.g. the disappearance of the 3rd place in addition to work and home), as well as most people being stuck in an endless stressful rat race that they will not ever escape due to the state of the economy and the moneyed interests, alongside the daily stress and social media making things worse. All the injustice out there, maladaptive behaviors, normalization of hate and borderline tribal "us vs them" mentality at pretty much every turn (genders, politics, race, everything). Might be a consequence of being too exposed to information out there and not ignorant enough, but go figure.

by KronisLV

12/6/2025 at 3:28:21 PM

This isn't new. People have said this for centuries. You can find people wondering this when the steam engine was invented, when the printing press was invented, etc.

by chneu

12/6/2025 at 2:41:55 PM

So what? "Illness" is not necessarily a useful category or criterion for anything.

by Hizonner