Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
think it has potential as a place for further research, because maybe some mental illness is caused by a separate underlying condition causing insomnia. Again, not a neuroscientist, just a guy on a hockey forum.
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This is more or less my point, though. Why do we have guys (nowhere near just you) on hockey forums speculating about the scientific causes and instantiations of non-specified mental illnesses? As you yourself admit, you're not qualified to wonder whether "folks are checking facebook/instagram on their phones in bed instead of sleeping", thus somehow producing mental illness in some form or other. It'd be a lot easier to dispel myths about this topic, and thereby decrease the surrounding stigma, if there was less nonsense floating about.
There is considerably less reliable data, less scientific understanding of (for example) depression than there is cancer. Yet you'd probably agree with me that you would be hard pressed to find threads in online forums like Calgarypuck, filled with amateur oncologists speculating about the causes and effects of non-hodgkin's lymphoma. That would be seen as a misleading waste of time and in somewhat bad taste given that there are actual people living with cancer, and those who know them, who aren't any more interested in reading armchair diagnoses and speculation about it. I swear, if I have to read one more meme or facebook status about how someone's homeopathic remedy does wonders for "feelings of depression" I'm going to burn down a health food store. Insert joke about social media causing violent outbursts here.
This complaint is, of course, a very different thing from talking about living with the illness and empathizing with people affected by it, which we see plenty of on this board and can only be appreciated. The amateur musings about the nature of the illness itself are, for me, frustrating, because they contribute to the broad misunderstandings and erroneous information that are the norm in the public discourse. Speaking for myself, I wish people would do a lot less pondering aloud on this subject.