jsolomon

I was an RA at the RAND Corp who put together literature reviews for mental health interventions like this. The Vitamin D result is implausible. If true it would be the biggest breakthrough in the history of psychiatry.

This is the referenced meta-analysis: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...

The largest N study (N=18,353; more than half of the entire 31 study sample) included is https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768978, which found: "Risk of depression or clinically relevant depressive symptoms was not significantly different between the vitamin D3 group...and the placebo group."

The highest dose study (100,000 IU/week) included is https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30532541/, which found: "...the treatment response or BDI scores did not differ significantly between groups."

The paper/supplementary materials doesn't include a simple table of the depression outcomes for the 31 included studies, which is a glaring omission.

I think someone just messed up here. Maybe missed a decimal place?

For a more realistic perspective, here's another careful meta-analysis of RCTs of Vitamin D for depression that found null result: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08999... (granted, 2015). And another from 2025 that found a .36 effect size, which is plausible and still fantastic: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10....

I don't mean to dissuade people from trying these given the low risk profile, just don't expect to go from a C to an A.

What a great question and rich topic. Thanks for asking. I'm in the same boat with mom. She lives alone and is a very high trust person so she picks up every phone call and reads every email with uncritical optimism. I'm horrified every time I see what new apps she has installed and truly have no idea where she finds them - "It just popped up!"

I've done a ton of things here but the latest that has actually given me some piece of mind is setting up a financial aggregator app with all her accounts + some basic notification rules for withdrawals >$X connected to my email. Obviously this requires a lot of trust from your parent, a lot of trust in Plaid (which I hate and worry about), and doesn't fully protect against the worst cases since it's reactive not preventive. But it's felt like a good backstop at the very least.

This entire process has been so frustrating and nerve-racking that I'd happily pay quite a bit for a "digital security for seniors" service if something like that existed.

Good luck!

Links from Google aren't paywalled, so just Google the headline and click the first link. Works for all major papers.

No need for cash compensation, though since I'm just doing this for a few people I probably won't be able to match based on specific learning/teaching areas. If it's a matter of logistics I'm happy to accept paypal/venmo and just send the other person an Amazon gift code on your behalf.

thanks - yes I've heard of that one! Great example of the internet promoting human connection...

Hope I can find you an interesting conversation :)

Thanks, @schoen.

Good points and I agree all around - just wanted to keep it as lightweight as possible to start.

I did a bit of searching first and didn't find much. Something like chatroulette.com has similar features but doesn't quite hit the mark of a respectful, private-AMA. Let me know if you see anything else.

> The way we got into a situation with Trump as a major party nominee in the first place was by not talking to people who are very different than we are. The polarization of the country into two parallel political realities is not good for any of us. We should talk to each other more, not less.

This really resonated. It's hard to overestimate how isolated we are from The Outgroup and how rarely we actually do anything about it.

If anyone is genuinely interested in talking to someone who is very different than themselves, I'm volunteering to play recruiter/matchmaker and coordinate some (hopefully) interesting conversations. I started a Ask HN thread to discuss so please let me know: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12729057