[beermann]

Sorry for the obligatory, somewhat self-serving post. Our startup, Pacifica (http://thinkpacifica.com), focuses on a few tools that help people identify these cognitive distortions. Specifically, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy defines a cycle relating how your thoughts affect your feelings, behaviors, and physical wellbeing (as a fully connected bidirectional graph). Understanding how your thoughts are distorted can better prepare you for the next time they crop up, helping you step outside this cycle. In many cases CBT has been shown to be as effective as psychiatric drugs in the short term, and even more effective in the long term as it helps people focus on the source of their anxieties. We're trying to take these same tools, proven in clinical practices all over the world, and apply them to a much broader audience.

[visarga]

What I learned from CBT is that some thoughts are like factories, they produce negative emotions (anxiety, depression, anger, etc). Unless these thoughts are corrected, they will continue to produce negative emotions and these negative emotions will continue to sabotage our life.

In turn, a negative emotion can be a thought factory, thus making a vicious circle. Distorted thought -> negative emotion -> more distorted thoughts. This cycle can be broken by rectifying the distorted thoughts (with cognitive restructuring) or by calming emotions (for example, with meditation or medication).

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Understanding how your thoughts are distorted can better prepare you

The trouble is that anyone with profound issues no longer has the capacity for extreme metacognition.

[amirouche]

Put the problem the other way around and you will have a wonderful project. Just saying.

Extreme metacognition, like getting yourself out-of-trouble? Given anybody in front of problem tailored for them to fail, they will fail. How much people are not good citizen? More or less than crazy people? Both kind of people harm themselfs. We call only one “crazy”. We call crazy people “crazy” because we don't know how to let them be back and explain in plain text what's harming them.

People study crazy people not only because it's “easy” to extract knowledge and models, but because it's the “good thing”.

[pcpolice]

“Crazy” is a term you probably don't want to use when referring to mental health and/or patients/sufferers.

[beermann]

You're right. We are not a substitute for therapy in cases like this. Pacifica works very well for people with mild to moderate anxiety, but in the more extreme cases (e.g. OCD, PTSD), it is necessary to be working with a professional. But a lot of people experience anxiety on a daily basis while maintaing a capability for self analysis.

[amirouche]

It's [worse|better] than that, they have improved cognition capacity.

[beermann]

I should have been clear: I don't know the OP. I was surprised to see this on HN today.

[gmaslov]

FYI, you've got a merge conflict marker hanging out in your privacy policy :)

<<<<<<< HEAD:web/src/main/resources/com/pacifica/web/views/privacy.ftl We use this information solely [...]

[beermann]

Ha, thanks for that. I'll get it fixed.

[pvnick]

Great to see a startup in the mental health sphere. There are a lot of people who could really use the tools that CBT provides. Best of luck to you guys!