On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness

http://www.theopennotebook.com/2017/07/18/on-being-a-science-writer-and-managing-a-mental-illness/

by fern12 • 9 years ago

104 44 9 years ago

hycaria2• 9 years ago

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.

dan002• 9 years ago

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.

hycaria2• 9 years ago

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 !

gcb04• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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

Is it your opinion based on... ?

sqldba• 9 years ago

Not the OP but Feeling Good states that people responded to CBT as good or better than drugs, though, both at once were more effective again.

They could also be thinking of Anatomy of an Epidemic where long term results of people on drugs are worse than those off. Specifically that there's never been such a finding for CBT having a long term negative impact.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a medical specialist just a sufferer and reader)

gcb04• 9 years ago

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"

privateprofile• 9 years ago

There is a growing body of research [1] that questions the usefulness of drugs for mental health. I personally know a case at a local hospital (in Europe) where a switch off meds and into therapy brought serious improvements in elderly patients.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2582668/ , https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/are-antidep... , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592645/

peteretep5• 9 years ago

    > reads like a medication pamphlet

I did both. The therapy was of limited use. The pills were like a light switch that have simply turned off my mental illness with almost no side-effects.

ThrowawayP• 9 years ago

The pills were like a light switch that have simply turned off my mental illness with almost no side-effects.

That means that you're in the not particularly large fraction of people that the pills work well for. Good for you.

For the rest of us, well, the pills can be a hell of side-effects, tolerance, and rebound ... and that's if they have any primary positive effect at all.

shubhamjain• 9 years ago

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.

Sorreah• 9 years ago

That is not my experience at all, and I believe the term imposter syndrome is widely used by others in the industry.

jokoon4• 9 years ago

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• 9 years ago

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.

amelius• 9 years ago

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?

I'm sure most musicians don't care about that. It's big media that thinks this way, and coincidentally produces mostly stuff that real music-lovers find crap.

deckiedan• 9 years ago

"Most" musicians (at least, all the ones I know personally) spend most of their time freelance teaching, doing relatively dull studio/session/gig work freelance (with all the stress and uncertainty that entails), practicing several hours a day just so they don't degrade, gig work at clubs/pubs/etc. and only occasionally managing to find time to do anything truly creative and new-new.

Re-arranging crappy piano scores so they fit a scratch band they've been asked to work with, figuring out how to stretch the tiny school budget into buying a less awful keyboard...

If they do have time and energy to put into 'green field' music production, there may be some stress over whether or not it's liked, but realistically they're mostly doing it because the concept of the album inspires them so they can't sleep at night because the melody is stuck in their head.

eeZah7Ux• 9 years ago

no one is asked to build a product that succeeds in the market

Except startup owners and many others. Even in many large companies an unsuccessful product can lead to teams being let go or reassigned to do boring work. Also, stack ranking...

Being a writer, or a musician ... perennial anxiety

That's the tradeoff for doing a really creative job. I love the creativity of development but nobody will read our code in public in 500 years from now.

I won't suddenly cease to be a decent programmer

Burnout happens to do that.

taneq• 9 years ago

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.

Really? Maybe in really large companies, but even then, management just decide what product to build. It's still the engineers that build it.

chaostheory• 9 years ago

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

On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness

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