I bought a Sceptre a few years ago but it died pretty quickly (dead pixel strip on the screen). But the replacement 44" Insignia (Best Buy) that I replaced it with has been an awesome tv.

So yes, you can just walk into the Electronics Store (Best Buy) and purchase a dumb TV.

Best Buy no longer produces dumb Insignia TVs.

There are absolutely people with bigger problems than depression. For example, I have MS, and my mental health is absolutely one of my less concerning problems. There are so many options for mental health + the treatments are much easier to access than a lot of my symptom management meds + DMT. People undergoing chemo. People with ALS. People with bipolar (who can't take a lot of first line depression treatments) or other more complex mental health issues like schizophrenia.

None of this is to downplay depression, but there are absolutely people for whom 'just depression' would be accurate. Migraines suck, but someone with cluster headaches might call them 'just migraines' and they wouldn't be wrong.

You didn't word it like that though. And I'd argue that for people with MDD, and without those comorbidities you listed, depression is a huge problem.

I'm not the GP; I'm a separate person who was providing potential context.

Something can be a huge problem and still be small potatoes to people having catastrophic problems, and often those of us in very, very dire circumstances are tone policed to within an inch of our lives and have to constantly consider normal people above ourselves (and make no mistake, people with MDD are closer to normal than somebody with ALS or severe cancer). We're never allowed to express anger, never allowed to talk about having it harder, have to stop and attend to the feelings of others while ours are ignored, etc.

Also, no offense, but depression can end up making people very self-centered. It's your illness that makes you think that what you're going through is more important and worse than what anyone else is going through, and it's not. (And it's not for me either: there are definitely people who have it worse than me and could say they wish their problem was 'just' MS. I just wouldn't get offended by that.)

reading some of the parents other comments, i dont think they were trying to downplay depression in general, and i dont think they meant any offense.

they were, perhaps, slightly careless in their choice of words. that's all.

I said it elsewhere, but it took me a month of micro dosing down to get off my 40mg/day citalopram habit, which I had been on for 15 years. And even on my own super slowed down schedule I still experienced massive side effects. Good luck to you if you ever decide to wean yourself off of it & always remember to keep backup citalopram in case you can't get your script refilled right away.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

A psychiatrist definitely does not always know these things. Mine told me there should be no Citalopram withdrawals and that I should taper by cutting my dose in half over a 2 week period.

They were absolutely wrong as I have serious withdrawal reactions to Citalopram. It took me a month of micro-dosing down to safely get off a drug I was on for 15 yrs. And even then I was having constant brain & body zaps, that feel like short circuiting, for a full month after I dosed down to nothing. 6 mos later & I still can't sleep more than 6 hrs.

How did I know this was going to happen? Going cold turkey when my script ran out. I even told my psych about it numerous times but they just brushed it off.

I used to use them, and 8" disks, daily with some of the first CAD/CAM engraving machines I used at work in the early 90's.

Worked fine for me in a temporary container in FF on Ubuntu. I have uBO, Privacy Badger & Disconnect extensions enabled.

"Is there any way to help the elderly navigate this shift?"

As it stands right now, no. Luckily, at least for now, I'm tech savvy enough to navigate it. But the 100, mostly immigrant, elderly residents of my building will not be so lucky.

Two months ago I learned, during a water outage on a Saturday morning, that my building's new assistant manager was an AI bot from EliseAI. What was an actual emergency, it thought, was something that could be dealt with the following week. It told me that management would respond on Monday, which is completely unacceptable during an emergency water outage. I had no water for 3 days & on Monday the actual human manager waffled on why it wasn't immediately fixed & thought it was cute (he giggled & got excited) that I discovered that the assistant manager was now an AI bot.

And just yesterday, I got an unsolicited text from an unknown number that looks exactly like a phishing scam attempt, except that it was sent by the assistant manager AI bot. The text said that I had $130 in unpaid rent & had links to remedy it. WHAT?!! First, it's illegal in CA to give a tenant notice that way. Second, it looked exactly like a phishing scam attempt. I obviously didn't click the links, but I did parse them & found that they belonged to EliseAI. This also happened a month after the human manager gave out a notice about back rent that I had already asked about. He told me I had $0.00 debt on the books. So why the AI bot phishing attempt?

I perused EliseAI's privacy policy and there is no way that I will be knowingly feeding any PII into it.

I haven't tracked down the manager yet to give him a piece of my mind. But in what world is this kind of activity OK? How are non-tech savvy folks going to survive these things? Especially the large non-English speaking elderly population in my building. As far as I can see (I live in SF & am surrounded by it), we're doomed.