• Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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    12 days ago

    Is that your advice to depressed people who think life is hopeless? Belief in things without having real evidence?

    Yeah, that’s exactly what drag was trying to say. Believing in things without evidence forms an important PART of a treatment plan. It should also be supplemented by exercise, medication, social activities, and CBT if possible.

    • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Drag is saying that depressed people should “just believe” which is much crazier than saying depressed people should “just believe in evidence”.

      People do not need to believe in what drag is saying without evidence, because that evidence exists, so they can just as easily believe in it WITH evidence.

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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        12 days ago

        Depression makes it harder to believe the evidence that things can get better, because the disease impairs the part of your brain that processes good news. If you’re functional enough that you can believe good news, drag is proud of you.

          • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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            12 days ago

            Yeah, if you have a disease that impairs you ability to process facts. When a disease is impairing your judgement so you can’t see the facts, believing in facts is impossible. You can’t see them. That’s like asking a blind from birth person to believe in the colour red. When you tell a severely depressed person to believe in facts, they just feel frustrated that they can’t see the facts. They feel like you’re lying to them. It’s counterproductive.

            If you tell them to believe in nothing, well that’s easy, because nothing is precisely what they can see. It doesn’t feel like a contradiction to them. They are acknowledging the absurdity of what they must do and then doing it.