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I am a mental health professional in training. There's a lot that can be said here, but I will keep it to what I think are the few most important ideas I can communicate. If these don't work for you, please comment here and let me know your thoughts.

1. If you intend to kill yourself or someone else, please call this number: 1-800-273-8255. It is a crisis hotline for suicidality. Even if you are highly doubtful that it can help, make the call. Everyone who is suicidal is highly doubtful there's a better way, almost by definition. And yet this number does help the vast majority of those people who do call it. It's worth a chance.

2. You seem to be describing a "major depressive episode." This is not something you should try to address only through self-help or HN (though taking the steps you have taken was an excellent move in that it is going to help you find the next ones to take).

For one thing, there is a physiological element that medication may be required to address. For another thing, the very faculties that you would use to try to help yourself are almost certainly hindered and distorted while in this depressed state. Your problem-solving abilities are likely compromised. Your ability to see alternatives is likely compromised. Your sense of realism in evaluating your situation is likely compromised.

You should seek professional help - from a professional counselor, clinical social worker, clinical or counseling psychologist, or psychiatrist. I would say the same thing even if you were one of those things.

3. There are barriers to seeing a professional for many people. It might be money, it might be stigma, it might be bad experiences in the past, lack of motivation, lack of information, feelings that it won't be helpful -- it's different for different people.

Also, some people will see a therapist one or two times and then decide that therapy didn't work. Therapists are like graphic designers, software engineers, carpenters, or any other profession -- there is variable quality and variable styles. And even among the good ones, some of them may just not a fit for you.

But I assure you there are competent therapists that you will feel a connection with. In fact, most therapists are pretty solid people to sit down with, and they won't have their feelings hurt if they turn out not to be the one to help you -- they'll want to help you find that one.

So consult with a professional. Make a call. Schedule an appointment. Tell them where you are. And if they suck or you don't like them, go try another one.

4. Depression can cause hopelessness, and it feels real and appears real -- that the world is actually that way, that life will always be that way. You can't trust those thoughts and feelings. You've got to take some steps in spite of them. Recognize that it is as if you are under a dark spell. Resist the influence of that dark spell as you try to get it lifted.

5. As I said above, I will check back here tonight to see if you reply to this. Odds are good that you are skeptical about some or all of what I've said here (though if you're not, that's fine too). I can't provide therapy (and this isn't therapy), but I can help with this kind of process of seeking information and exploring your options.

Edit: 6. (Forgot to add...) You should be very very careful with drugs and alcohol right now. Many people who are depressed but not actively suicidal take their lives when under the influence.

Intestinal flora exchange. Remove the reference to feces as that's incidental anyway.

Or when their parents become ill. Or for purposes of society.

I've recently wondered if shaking the head to signify disagreement or refusal stems from that being an effective way for a child to refuse food it doesn't want. My son shakes his head almost reflexively, and it makes it very hard to feed him something he doesn't want.

There's nuance here that's going to be totally lost on the general public as this becomes an anti-science talking point.

Something as simple as lighting could also play into it depending on what opportunities you have for seeing someone at different times.

As for your argument against 100 pills, that only holds if it's well-known or well-established that it works and works safely.

Totally disagree. Android, Google Now, Knowledge Graph, Maps, Drive/Docs, Google+ itself, and the Play Store have all seen marked improvements since the rollout of Google+.

In Gmail, the new compose UI is an improvement in same ways -- for me it's an improvement overall, smart labels are an improvement, and email search has gotten significantly better.

Oh, and virtually every mobile application of theirs has gotten much better.

As established by arethuza, hot fusion has been accomplished for some time, relatively easily, outside of thermonuclear weapons and stars. That was the claim in dispute. Nowhere in this thread was there a claim about power generation.

Well then you have people like Ze Frank.

>To this day career counselling focuses almost completely on interests and lifestyle and ignores salary.

What's your experience with this? I've found earnings and job market to be regular features of career counseling sessions.

I first encountered this method of zooming in and out in an Android browser called xScope a few years back. The developer called it "pin zoom," and it was one of the major features he touted.

Incidentally, xScope was also the first multi-touch browser for Android. I'm not sure what that dev is up to now, but I like to give him props when this UI technique comes up.

It's written on the ship in the final image.

I like the way you've characterized the awkward kid's lament -- I think you nailed it.

However, this seems more like making online dating (which generally includes many attempts at making things more straightforward) into something that more closely mirrors the way many people find dates offline, through being introduced and endorsed by friends.

As a former awkward kid, I can't imagine that making things more social would be seen as favorable by someone who struggles with socialization and maybe has fewer or less charming friends.

Safe to assume it is a faithful emulation.

edit: Because that's the expectation of the scene in which this video has made waves.

The chicken pox vaccine is what comes to mind as a recent one.

Is there some way to activate this option? Sometimes it seems my voice input is bottlenecked by the connection when I'm driving in a low-coverage area.

You're right about that. And same for Curtis Institute of Music and probably a dozen other conservatories as well. But those are more focused on "art music" / classical music.

I recently wrote a short paper that involved reviewing some recent literature on ADHD diagnosis, faking, treatment options, and abuse. I've created a pastebin with my references for those interested in these topics.

http://pastebin.com/Kf6W2vUA

I'm also happy to discuss the topic with anyone without access to these journals. I'm not an expert, but it's something I'm learning about.

What is your application?

Can you not share location? Or do you just miss the graphical touch of dropping pins?

>And no, you can not get around this problem by doing a multivariate regression of speed on gas pedal and hill.

I'm no expert on statistics, but this seems like a pretty basic scenario for a statistical analysis to provide insight into. These two phenomena would be perfectly correlated in both the time of appearance and the degree.

You wouldn't be able to derive anything about the effect of hills or gas pedals on speed, but you'd be given a powerful clue as to what's going on.

The second there's even a tiny imbalance between the two, you're given the relationship to speed.

This is just stupid. Caffeine should either be consumed in moderation or not at all.

I do that sometimes. That way I can copy something to the clipboard and then drag something else either to a new tab or to another application.

To be clear, I was talking about recognition of symptoms and referral to experts, not diagnosis. Diagnosis is a much trickier issue. Thanks for sharing your thesis and for the interesting read about schizophrenia diagnosis.

There are useful diagnostic criteria and well-understood risk factors for all sorts of mental illnesses. Schizophrenia is a particularly vexing case, but that does not mean that one cannot recognize that someone is at-risk for or already dealing with a mental health problem.

It is not that hard to recognize symptoms of mental illness. You certainly don't need to be a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist. You don't even need to be a LCSW or a LPC.

It would be, at most, a single course in an undergraduate or a graduate program. It could probably be rolled in to existing curricula just as a chapter or an exam as a component of a related class.

We're not talking about diagnosis, just recognition of symptoms to the point where a referral can be made.

"Isn’t social research by its nature normally based on anecdotal evidence?"

No. That's the very antithesis of what social research is, by its nature.

It seems you decided to downvote my reply for some reason. That's a disappointment.

>Not ethically, no -- not possible. Prospective double-blind studies are virtually unheard of in psychology because of ethical issues.

Why do you believe this to be the only valid form of scientific study? Do you hold all disciplines to this standard?

>Yes, true, which is why, in a scientific sense, we don't know anything about these topics.

We know that certain assessments reliably indicate the presence of depression. We know certain conditions reliably induce depression. We know certain therapies reliably relieve depression. We know certain risk factors lead to greater likelihood of depression.

>For example, it has recently been determined by way of a meta-analysis that the many antidepressant studies, taken as a whole, contradict each other, and the conclusion is that antidepressants don't work.

>In layman's language, "there is no scientific evidence to support the conclusion that antidepressants actually do anything."

Can you explain to me how science can decide one way or another on matters concerning depression if such things are inscrutable to the scientific method?

You're begging the question. It absolutely is possible to have well-designed studies that address these topics. It's how we know anything about depression, anxiety, happiness, motivation, etc. etc.