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Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

This used to be the case for most communities in America, before we decided that externalizing and professionalizing everything was the "economically efficient" solution. If you had a problem, you'd talk to the elder folks in your community and see what they thought about it. Now we barely know our neighbors and our community elders are shipped off to special-purpose holding facilities.

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I don't know, the confidentiality of a professional therapist is huge. Plus a lot of the elders I know would advise you to deal with depression by sucking it up. Or try to pray the gay away.

Now a professional therapist might not want to tell you to do anything at all. The ones I've met have been very passive. They listen, it's great, but they don't point in any direction.

depends on the therapist and your situation. lots of difficult decisions in life come down to what you personally value. the therapist can talk it through with you, but they can't decide your values for you. on the other hand, if you're depressed and spend most of your time in bed, the therapist might strongly recommend that you try going outside more.

While it's true that my therapist never tells me to do much of anything, he often offers me some much needed perspective I can use to make my own decisions to do or not do things. So, I guess you can say I indirectly get direction from my therapist.

It's give and take. Everyone knowing your problems can make you a target for persecution, but it also makes it more difficult for you to get involved in things that your community disapproves of (again, sometimes this is bad, but sometimes it's good).

The loss of meatspace community can mean falling into a counterculture that is, ironically, at once met with suspicion by the mainstream, but also better at helping members manage difficulties and better at enforcing certain nominally-embraced but practically-ignored moral standards. For example, late-century LGBT communities (who encouraged unconditional love for one's neighbors better, them or your local ministry?).

>the confidentiality of a professional therapist is huge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_Confessional_and_t...

OK, but you're still back to "pray the gay away" if you go to a priest, at least through most of human history.

There are plenty of issues people have that aren't related to being gay. Most of them, I'd guess. That doesn't help if that's your issue, but it also doesn't mean the entire practice is useless.

Out of curiosity (because of the topic): do you consider this to be an an evidence based belief (taking into consideration the comprehensive nature of it)?

Should add that unlike any professional oath or body, Catholic priests will literally die before breaking the Confessional Seal. They will never follow any government or politician order to break it, and even the Pope himself cannot order them to do so. Many have gone to jail or been martyred keeping the Seal (as listed a bit lower in the same article).

This strikes me as rose-tinted nostalgia, along with straight up misinformation/weasel words. “Elders are shipped off to special-purpose holding facilities?” Really?

That’s just not a good-faith statement.

Younger people meet friends through work and school. Some of them – gasp – even know their neighbors!

But let’s be clear here: for even very close friends it’s often not preferable to burden them with my deepest chronic mental issues. They aren’t professionals and they don’t know how to approach those problems.

On top of that, there are negatives to that “village” system. Namely, peer pressure, shunning, gossip, etc. Sure, I want to confide in my family and friends, but there’s a line I won’t cross where a skilled, neutral, confidential party is the better choice.

I see the professionalization of mental health help to be an overall good thing. If I don’t trust my neighbor to help fix the engine control unit in my car why would I trust my neighbor to help me sort out complex mental health issues and find management tools and medication?

I’d guess that most of my family or neighbors’ or friends’ mental health advice is clinically, verifiably wrong/damaging/counterproductive.

Unfortunately, the trusted person in many communities could sometimes make things far, far worse. In my community there were a handful of priests and teachers at a local private school who abused children entrusted to their care.

Can priests get married yet or does the Catholic church still want sexual abuse to continue?

The rate of sexual abuse by priests is slightly lower than that by public school teachers. Obviously there’s a lot of factors here, but “proximity to and frequent interactions with children making sexual abuse more possible” may be the biggest.

I think that was just a natural progression brought on by the advances in psychology/psychiatry. Similar to how we've decided trust people with mental health issues to take their meds while participating in society, instead of just locking them away in an institution like we used to. Plus the other good points that people have brought up, like anonymity and generally sound, unbiased advice.

Yes. Let’s hope it makes a comeback. The current direction is unsustainable..

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