Ask HN: How is your mental health?
&gt; <i>How and how well do you keep track of your mental health</i><p>Mentally. Not very well. This is an area in need of improvement for me. I&#x27;m mid-30s and mental health is getting to be pretty important as of late.<p>&gt; <i>, particularly for those with a history of mental health issues, and those with a family history of mental issues.</i><p>TBQH I think that means <i>everyone</i>.<p>I live in America. In America, mental health takes a backseat to just about everything. Man up and get work done. If you&#x27;ve got a mental issue then feel free to get fired because there&#x27;s a dozen more people behind you waiting to be employed for just as cheap. If you can&#x27;t afford to be fired then that&#x27;s <i>just too bad</i>.<p>I don&#x27;t trust insurance companies. Outside of insurance, therapists are <i>expensive as !@#$</i>, particularly if you&#x27;re poor. You&#x27;re paying for someone else&#x27;s time and &quot;time is money, friend.&quot;<p>My employer&#x27;s insurance has an Employee Assistance Program. I looked at it and... therapy is over the phone??? I would never talk therapy to someone over the phone. First I have a lot of trouble understanding people on the phone. The audio quality is poor to begin with but I genuinely have trouble hearing&#x2F;understanding&#x2F;remembering&#x2F;responding to words people say. There&#x27;s a <i>ton</i> of body language which is just <i>gone</i> when you&#x27;re talking on the phone (or VOIP or even webcam). There&#x27;s a delay between transmission and reception. Then there&#x27;s also the fact that phones aren&#x27;t secure. I have trust issues so security is important.<p>I have literally no idea how to even <i>find</i> a therapist other than asking my employer&#x27;s insurance company for a list. I don&#x27;t want to do that. I don&#x27;t want to tip anyone off to think &quot;oh man @inetknght is a mental case, we&#x27;d better fire them&quot; or &quot;@inetknght thinks dark thoughts, we need to put them in a mental cell&quot; which is basically a permanent thing (good luck getting out of a mental cell). I know there are different kinds of therapists and I have no idea how to find the &quot;right&quot; kind nor how to find the right <i>trustworthy</i> kind. I have no idea how to find someone I could trust.<p>A lot of that is part of growing up poor, nearly destitute. So I&#x27;ve had no direct opportunities to be diagnosed with any sort of mental issues either. Mental health wasn&#x27;t covered under my parents&#x27; insurance (when we had even some health insurance), and was never part of any school program (not that I had much school), and no employer seemed interested in the mental health of employees. Growing up, I&#x27;d heard many anecdotes about people who had a mental breakdown and were quickly dismissed from employ so I definitely never mentioned it merely out of fear of &quot;oh is this something we should worry for you, uniquely? then you&#x27;re fired&quot;. <i>Literally nobody</i> even asked about my mental health until after I was 30.<p>I&#x27;m willing to admit that I&#x27;m <i>terrified</i> of going to a therapist. Terrified of the therapist thinking I&#x27;m a nutcase when all I did is grow up on the internet with a different set of social values than those around me. Terrified that one therapist would think my rights need to be taken away. So I bury my head and don&#x27;t tackle the problem because there isn&#x27;t an easy trustworthy discrete door to go into. There&#x27;s no way I&#x27;d trust any <i>business</i> with my mental health. Not insurance, not a silicon valley startup, and not my employer. No way in hell.<p>I also know that if there&#x27;s an emergency then I have friends who I trust to help. They&#x27;re more than I used to have a few years ago; I used to be depressed to the edge of suicide. My friends have helped a lot in fixing that. They&#x27;re not therapists. They&#x27;re more support than what others might have, though, and that means a lot to me.<p>Tracking mental health? That sounds like a good direction. I&#x27;m not opposed to an app to do that but I wouldn&#x27;t put that on my phone. Nor would I put it on my computer. I wouldn&#x27;t put it anywhere with internet access. Requiring internet access would be a non-starter.