A Shawn64 Retrospective

By: Derek Yu

On: April 11th, 2008

Clysm, aka tapeworm, has written a nice retrospective on Shawn “Shawn64” Noel, a prolific and well-respected developer in the Game Maker community. Shawn was best known for his Jetz Rampage series of games, as well as Street Bike Fury, the last game he released before he tragically took his own life in 2006. He was 17 years old.

(Source: moshboy, via IndieGames.com)

Posted in Community | Tags: Shawn64

Paul Eres

Depression medication has actually been shown to *increase* the rate of suicide. I knew a guy online who was depressed, got on anti-depressant medication, and then, KILLED HIMSELF.

So yes, I really don’t recommend taking medication for depression, based on my experience.

Interestingly this is the first time I’ve agreed with I Like Cake so much. :)
Paul Eres

I meant anti-depressant medication above, not “depression medication”, obviously.

We also have no idea if Shawn was on anti-depressant medication or not when he killed himself; it could have been the reason. It increases suicide rate drastically for teenagers.
Corpus

You don’t normally agree with I Like Cake? He seems to be a chap prone to talking sense.

“Depression medication has actually been shown to increase the rate of suicide. I knew a guy online who was depressed, got on anti-depressant medication, and then, KILLED HIMSELF.

So yes, I really donâ€™t recommend taking medication for depression, based on my experience.”

You can’t recommend or NOT recommend something based on a single personal experience, for obvious reasons. Also, what you said doesn’t necessarily suggest that the anti-depressants lead to his suicide. It only suggests that they failed to prevent it.
Corpus

Oh, but, yeah, I’ll have to look into what you say about anti-depressants increasing suicide rates in teenagers.
sinoth

“Medication will NOT change your personality, it will only improve your mood.”

I hate blanket statements like these. You have to treat depression on a individual basis. I’m close to someone who went on anti-depressants and it destroyed their personality. Imagine a sine wave, with ups and downs representing periods of happiness and sadness. We all have these ups and downs… without the down how could you appreciate the up? For this person, meds turned the wave into a flat line. Sure, no sadness… at the cost of little to no happiness.

IMO, meds should be used as a LAST resort. As mentioned numerous times in the thread, try lifestyle changes first. Relieve stress. Build up some good friendships. Meds are NOT a magic bullet, and should not be treated as such (even though a lot of the time, they unfortunately are).
aaa

it’s all natural selection. you can try to take medication or whatever but you cannot escape from the process of natural selection. some people aren’t meant to live, that’s just how it is.
Gr.Viper

There are many other people who literally aren’t meant to live due to inherent internal organ problems. But they get surgically treated and go forth and multiply, yet that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. In a few generations humans could face very interesting problems…

Anti-depressants might not even work for some. I remember the one I used to take just forced me to smile a lot. So what? I smiled and told jokes when I broke my arm, not that I was really happy then.
I Like Cake

aaa, natural selection is a fact of the development of life, not a moral imperative.

Organisms which are less ‘fit’ are more likely to die off before producing offspring, hence over many generations, life tends to optimize ‘fitness.’ This is a natural process which describes the way the world functions, not an ethical ideal.

For some reason, many people seem to think it makes sense to extend this into moral philosophy, while failing to consider the absurdity of applying the same logic to other natural processes. To give an example, rape is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, among both humans and our close relatives. It is an efficient method of spreading genetic material. However, even most people who regard survivability as a moral quality would not say that rape is ethical simply because it could have an evolutionary function.

More generally, this is an example of the is/ought fallacy, which states baselessly that something ‘ought’ to be simply because it is. There’s no reason this should be the case. It is, however, great for reinforcing the status quo, when you start talking about how people who died tragically are supposed to be dead, how the rich are supposed to be rich and how the poor are supposed to be poor. That makes everything wrong with the world instantly okay in some non-specific, hazily defined sense.
I Like Cake

Man, my comments get moderated like crazy. Is it because I’m TOO REAL!?

“As far as meds being mere placebos? Wellâ€¦ the same studies showed that sugary drinks had no direct contribution to kids acting crazy hyperactive, so I have to take that with a pinch of salt.”

Well, I have two issues with that, first of all, that is a different study. Refusing to believe the results of one study because you do not agree with the results of another study conducted by different researchers with a differing methodology is akin to refusing to believe me when I tell you your house is on fire because someone else once lied to you about the existence of Santa Claus.

Secondly, double blind studies actually point out only that there is no statistically significant correlation between sugar intake and hyperactivity. That does not mean there is no relation of any kind, simply that there is no general, linear relation across the entire sample which is recognizable, with some degree of certainty, as separate from other, uncontrolled contributing factors. This still leaves open the possibility, for example, that some children have slightly hyperactive behavior induced by sugar intake while others do not.

All the same, there is no real evidence that sugar does contribute to hyperactivity. This idea became popular in the 70s with the publishing of various diets discussing the evils of sugar without the benefit of supporting evidence. So far, the only meaningful correlation that has turned up in the sugar discussion is that parents who believe sugar contributes to hyperactivity are significantly more likely than parents who do not believe such a contributing factor exists to categorize a child’s behavior as hyperactive after the child has had a sugary drink or item of food. This strongly suggests that the perception is purely psychological.

Really, more than anything this indicates the necessity of controlled studies in gleaning accurate information. Many people may still believe that anti-depressants are effective because they have witnessed someone take anti-depressants and recover. However, despite these two events occurring together, there is a myriad of reasons which do not relate the two, such as alternate, coexisting treatments or even simple regression, which are simply not observable in the individual case.

Studies are not perfect, carrying out an accurate study is extremely complicated and requires a great deal of expertise in terms of assembling a model, gathering data and interpreting results. However, studies allow us to determine the long run probability of an event, which is completely indeterminable from a single, individual observation. A study which uses an incorrect methodology can yield spurious results. However, that does not mean that studies are inferior to personal observation, which is just as likely as not to yield spurious results. That is analogous to purchasing a broken electronic device over a working device because of the possibility that the working device might break at some point.

To get back to the main argument (sorry for writing an entire book here, there are a lot of comments to address), the studies on anti-depressants do not indicate they do nothing. Anti-depressants are drugs which can have serious effects. The studies indicate only that anti-depressants have no significant contribution to the treatment of depression. That suggests that taking anti-depressants makes you just as likely to recover from depression as you would be if you didn’t take them. That does not mean they have no effect, they just don’t affect depression.

In other words, the treatment is fake, but the side-effects are real.
noname

I don’t like the assumption that a person who kills themself automatically = depressed person.

People can kill themselves for a plethora of other reasons besides being depressed. One example I can give is someone who has achieved everything they’ve wanted to achieve in life to the point where living on is useless because they feel their life is complete and they can die happy. Or they could have some other mental illness besides depression or even a physical illness that they can’t get rid of and don’t want to live with anymore.

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound distasteful. Yeah, we know he killed himself. But it does not state why and within a few posts, Derek automatically jumped to the assumed that this kid was depressed. Why? If it was stated on some other website that he was indeed suffering from a form of depression, then show us. Otherwise, don’t just assume that since he killed himself that he was suffering from depression
Derek

I don’t regret my statement, because it generated a lot of good discussion! BUT, I apologize sincerely for making the issue seem so black and white. It’s a very complex problem, and should be treated on an individual basis.

Generally, I think being aware of your feelings, changing your lifestyle, talking to friends/family, are all proper solutions, and should be done regardless of whether you talk to a counselor or try medication (with care, of course).

A seriously depressed friend of my family went on medication, and it seemed to have very positive effects on her life. She went as far as to say that she never knew what it was like to truly be happy until that point. I don’t know (and probably no one can know) what parts of her treatment really brought her to that point, so it’s far from “proof” of anything. It’s just where I’m coming from.
robolee

well, really, what is the point in living, you are FORCED to work your whole life, and only receive freedom when you are 60+, and that depends on if you worked well enough when you was younger.

the alternative is you find a forest to live in, build a hut, catch your own food and get your own water. even then the forest will likely be owned, you will be deemed as a “madman”/”hippy” and you will not have things like electricity and… g- … g-games. :O
sinoth

Understood, Derek. I just wanted to throw a counter-point into the mix. The four points you made are likely true for a good number of people. I get on the offensive when people talk glowingly about anti-depression meds because, even though they can work, I really think they are over-prescribed.
sinoth

I apologize for the double post, but I wanted to respond to robolee’s comment. You make a good point about the society American’s live in (maybe the rest of the world? My world-view is pretty narrow). Either sacrifice your creative nature and play into a well-entrenched corporate system, or live in poverty. There are definitely some people who “play the game” well and end up having enough money to live comfortable without sacrificing time and energy on fruitless tasks, but they are not the majority. What other options do we have than the two extremes of corporate shill and backwoods hippy? I think many people (GAME DEVELOPERS?) are looking for a good medium but it’s difficult to find without sliding into poverty.
Oddbob

What I came out from the study with was the impression that it was indicating that the general prescription of the drugs covered weren’t appropriate for the wide spectrum of depression. That’s not to say that they do not effect depression, just that they’re not effective for milder cases and not appropriate to be prescribed as such (and overly prescribed also).

I don’t want to reiterate too much of what has been said already, but the treatment has to be on a case by case basis – and sometimes those cases are misjudged, misdiagnosed or treated incorrectly – whether that be through a lack of understanding, a lazy doctor or whatever.

It’s disingenuous to state they have absolutely no effect on depression as a blanket statement because there’s a weight of evidence that proves otherwise, and indeed it’s something that the report cited here as shocking new evidence to the contrary backs up.
Paul Eres

“You canâ€™t recommend or NOT recommend something based on a single personal experience, for obvious reasons.”

Actually I disagree. My epistemology is what you can call radical empiricism. I don’t trust “studies”, I trust my own experience, and only my own experience. You can disagree with that epistemology, but you can’t say I can’t use it.
Paul Eres

Which is not to say studies are worthless. They can be useful when your own personal experience is limited or absent.

But what I mean is a second-hand report is always inferior to a first-hand report. If 1000 guys say they know a guy who knows a guy who has seen a fairy, that doesn’t mean as much to me as if I actually saw a fairy myself. No amount of studies can prove to me that a fairy exists, until I see it myself.
Paul Eres

Another thing is, most of the knowledge we have and use every day didn’t come from the scientific method, it came from personal trial and error. We learned how to walk, how to open doors, how to type — we learned how to live –from experience, trial and error, personal experimentation. It’s strange to simply disregard all that because there are no studies to back it up.

For instance, there are probably no studies to show that walking on two legs is any better for humans than crawling, but should that stop us from walking, or recommending that others walk rather than crawl, even though it’s only based on our personal experience?
Derek

But is it a good idea to recommend walking on two legs after only your first step? I think that’s closer to what Corpus was trying to get at.

Also, I believe under your definition the experience you were recommending was a second-hand one. That is, you weren’t the depressed person nor did you take the medication.

(Not to say you were wrong in recommending at all. Especially since I also offered an opinion with second-hand knowledge.)