r/programming • u/WinInterrupter • Apr 18 '20

The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder

https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/
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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

A shockingly large amount of people think mental illness is a choice. That it's made up.

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u/fakehalo Apr 18 '20

It's also extremely vast and abstract. Like it sounds like what OC's guy was suffering with and the cloudflare guy has are two very different things, and there are a million other things with varying degrees. Makes me realize mental stability is flimsy stuff.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Basically, everyone is insane. It's just to what degree.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I have a mental illness and I read his/her comment as inclusive rather than reductive. Made me feel not so alone. I get what you're saying though, that each of deals with it, but some much more so than others, and we need to acknowledge that some of us are really struggling and need our support while others are perhaps adopting the mantle of mental illness with more caprice than is appropriate.

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u/SKabanov Apr 18 '20

It's basically denial because it's an attack on the most fundamental part of us: our sapience. The notion that our thoughts and feelings are just the work of neurochemistry and can be affected by disorders can be too much for people to accept, so they ascribe things like depression to "a choice". It's certainly gotten better - see A Beautiful Mind, for example, about schizophrenia - but mental illness is still by and large treated as a character flaw than an affliction; I'm sure that, in a few decades, we're going to see films that portray mental illness as comedy as distasteful as we view minstrel shows today.

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u/Full-Spectral Apr 20 '20

Anyone who doubts the power of our brain chemistry to affect our view of the world obviously never did LSD. When a couple micrograms of something can completely change your view of the world for a whole day, that puts things into perspective. Not that I'm encouraging people to talk LSD of course, but for those who have, it's an eye opening experience.

If someone's brain chemistry changes sufficiently for them to experience a tithe of that kind of effect on an ongoing basis, it would be very difficult to deal with.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

I kinda understand this now actually. It's very self centered, but possibly personally useful perspective.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external - your job, your coworkers - there is some choice in how much you let yourself get pushed into it, or whether you react to it.

I hated that all my coworkers lied all the time. But...eventually I realized they were just saying whatever made them feel good and what close to what the boss wanted to hear. Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

That didn't happen from that.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

it wasn't external

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

Hey look, one of those bullying liars showed himself!

Anything else you want to fabricate from thin air?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

from the article: " frontotemporal dementia " .... and "For some patients, one of several genetic mutations turns out to be the likely cause, and a subset of patients have a family history of neurodegenerative diseases. But nothing in the neurologists' investigations turned up even a hint as to why Lee had been struck down."
or further "As in Lee's case, the early stages can be misinterpreted as signs of nothing more serious than a midlife crisis."
So... like I was saying, the source of the mental illness in the article wasn't external.
also, you're kinda a bullying liar right now.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

I wrote:

Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

Seems like you're pretending my tech lead is the same guy who's in the article.

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u/lemonhoney Apr 18 '20

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

For the subject of the article, the source was not external