> It's not caffeine withdrawal or the flu. Even when no suicidal ideation is present, it's a serious disease with real costs to the individual and to society, just as real as cancer.
My argument is that it's not an "epidemic of depression" that we're dealing with but rather an "epidemic of over-diagnosis". I would argue that the industry is in practice being far too loose with the definition of "significant impact on one's lives". I think articles like this one blur the line even further by making it sound like everyone who has experienced a few of these symptoms suffers from depression. People read stuff like this and then start telling themselves "I'm depressed" and because of this mistaken belief many of them wind up being medicated inappropriately.
This epidemic of over-diagnosis has reached such vast proportions that I imagine the majority of people in the tech industry have been prescribed some kind of psychotropic drug to treat some form of mental illness at some point in their life. I wish I could get accurate statistics on this to prove my point.
As a side note I do think that caffeine induced psychosis is 100% real (because it's a very powerful drug) and the symptoms often mimic that of depression or bi-polar and can even be inclusive of phenomena such as hallucination. I don't have any credentials but my opinion as a layperson is that I think it's incredibly irresponsible to write a prescription or to give a diagnosis for any mental illness to a patient who has not first completely cut caffeine out of their lives.
My argument is that it's not an "epidemic of depression" that we're dealing with but rather an "epidemic of over-diagnosis". I would argue that the industry is in practice being far too loose with the definition of "significant impact on one's lives". I think articles like this one blur the line even further by making it sound like everyone who has experienced a few of these symptoms suffers from depression. People read stuff like this and then start telling themselves "I'm depressed" and because of this mistaken belief many of them wind up being medicated inappropriately.
This epidemic of over-diagnosis has reached such vast proportions that I imagine the majority of people in the tech industry have been prescribed some kind of psychotropic drug to treat some form of mental illness at some point in their life. I wish I could get accurate statistics on this to prove my point.
As a side note I do think that caffeine induced psychosis is 100% real (because it's a very powerful drug) and the symptoms often mimic that of depression or bi-polar and can even be inclusive of phenomena such as hallucination. I don't have any credentials but my opinion as a layperson is that I think it's incredibly irresponsible to write a prescription or to give a diagnosis for any mental illness to a patient who has not first completely cut caffeine out of their lives.