I disagree from what I’ve seen so far. Most of the discussions I’ve seen lately about newly migrated reddit users have been folks who were lurkers or mostly lurkers. I myself used to be active on reddit years ago, but have been a lurker for a good 6-7+ years now or so. I think you’re correct as of a few weeks ago when powerusers may have migrated earlier, but I think the migration post-API implementation has been a large amount of non-powerusers. Of course, users that are 100% casual, and don’t have accounts at all or only rarely used Reddit, and might not even be aware of what’s going on, those folks I’m sure didn’t really move.

Oh I didn’t know that! Thanks for mentioning it, TIL. I’m glad so many others are also trying their best to be active like this, I’m really optimistic so far about the community building around here if folks keep this up.

My experience is that psychiatrists have never just asked me “do you experience X”, going through those specific DSM symptoms, but instead they’ll administer some kind of questionnaire that asks a significantly larger number of more specific questions that give you some sort of score at the end. The score is then used to determine whether or not you rank highly in certain symptom areas, which can then help the psych better understand your symptoms and whether or not you qualify for a certain diagnosis.

From what I’ve read in various online sources, it seems to vary a LOT between different providers, patients, locations, etc. Even those who live in the same general location seem to have had dramatically different experiences. But, here is what I remember my process being like:

• Made an appointment with a psychiatrist (THIS WAS THE HARDEST PART BY FAR AND I HATED IT - It took me almost an entire year from start to finish to find psychiatrists that were in-network with my insurance, had open availability that wasn’t months and months out, I could get ahold of, specialized in my general areas of need (ADHD + other conditions), etc. Part of the problem was I kept giving up when I’d hit these barriers, to be fair)
• Had a consultation appointment with the psychiatrist where she asked me a lot of introductory questions, going over my general upbringing, career, daily life, concerns, symptoms, things that have helped or hurt, etc.
• Completed a few different questionnaires, some for ADHD and some for other things, like anxiety, and also had to share a questionnaire with my partner for him to fill out from his perspective on me
• Had a follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist plus another more senior psych, where we went through all of my results together and discussed my diagnoses, potential treatment options, etc.
• Had to visit a lab to get general bloodwork done, and also an electrocardiogram, to make sure there weren’t any health concerns to be aware of (or that could explain my symptoms) before trying stimulant medications for the first time
• Got cleared with all of that, had an appointment where we settled on a first medication to try, and then continued to meet with the psych every 2 weeks while we titrated my dosage and medication type.
• Nowadays, I only have an appointment every ~3 months with a psych to check-in and continue my prescriptions and/or update things, etc.

I hope that is helpful! I know it is scary starting the process, but I can’t stress enough how helpful it has been in the end for me. I’m really glad I pushed through and finally got help.

If it helps as well to hear what appointments were like, I found that the psychiatrists I have had (changed psychs occasionally due to moves) tended to be less interested in detailed discussions about feelings, emotions, or symptoms than my therapists have been. Not to say they aren’t interested, they are and they specifically ask things about them. But, they have seemed more interested in a “do you experience this”, “is it the same as before or improved/worsened”, etc, and less interested when I would go on detailed explanations of exactly what I was thinking during a particular event or experience, if that makes any sense. For example, it seemed like they preferred “Most days, I feel like my symptoms are significantly improved during midday, but I tend to consistently get spacey and sluggish around 5 pm every day. Increasing water and protein intake hasn’t seemed to fix it.” rather than, “Well, it’s different everyday, but I usually take my first dose around 9 or 10 AM or so. About an hour after that, I feel less “stuck” and am able to actually get up out of bed and do ‘normal’ things, like brush my teeth or get dressed. Sometimes I don’t get anything done after that, but I still feel more ‘normal’, you know? I tried changing my lunch to include more protein, and…” I realize reading this back that this seems like generic advice to not be long-winded and overly explain things, not just for psychiatrist appointments, but I hope what I’m trying to explain sort of got across lol.

I now realize I’ve written a significantly longer (and long-winded, hah) comment than I intended to, but I hope it is helpful in some way to you or someone else!

Got it! That makes sense, thank you.

<3

Glad I wasn’t the only silly one!

To add to this, I think people often underestimate how “easy” it can be to function in society without being able to read well. I know that some folks who either don’t read at all or read at a very low level have just gotten used to interpreting the world around them without the language part. For example, visually recognizing a username and password field on a website and knowing what they’re for, or recognizing the symbols and colors used for certain objects or meanings, all without the actual words needing to mean anything to them for them to understand what it is and what to do with it. And for those who can read at a 5th or 4th grade level (and would thus be included in the stat mentioned in this post), they’re likely then very capable of reading and understanding the majority of text they’re going to come across in their day-to-day lives.

Of course, I don’t want this to sound like I’m saying being illiterate is easy, I’m sure it creates MANY barriers and difficulties for the person, but I do think humans are also flexible and resilient, and are able to survive using other cues.

Thank you!!! That makes sense - so just checking, Top X is like “Hot”, but over a certain time period instead of “recent”? (In that it cares about rating instead of how many comments are being posted?)

Seems like bouncing between Active and Hot is still a good thing to do then maybe. To see whatever people are discussing as well as whatever the most upvoted stuff is.

Wouldn’t that in return cause the subs without those restrictions to end up receiving larger amounts of low-effort/value comments, from folks just throwing out comments randomly to try and bump their karma up enough to comment in the subs they actually want to participate in? Which means more subs instituting comment karma restrictions, and so the cycle continues?

To be fair, I don’t know what the correct answer is when bots and trolls are such a problem, but I do think it was super frustrating from a user’s perspective and discourages participation from people who would otherwise want to participate.

Eh, I think discussing potential improvement ideas isn’t harmful, as long as it’s done respectfully. IMO, that’s how you figure out the best improvements, with people sharing different perspectives/opinions/etc. Most of the discussion I’ve seen about Lemmy so far has been like that, not demanding changes or being rude to the developers (in fact, most of the sentiment I’ve seen towards the developers/hosts of instances has been super positive, which is great). I don’t think that folks entering the community should feel unwelcome to voice their opinions, even if others might disagree or those in charge don’t choose to make those changes in the end. But seeing folks talking about these things and seeing the number of people in support or against something might help someone in charge realize that maybe some change or update would actually be really beneficial to their site, and end up helping them make something their even more proud of. Although, I can imagine a huge influx of people to any site like this, along with the sudden boom in corresponding discussions, is pretty crazy to deal with if you’re the creator(s) of said site.

Well huh. I did not in fact know this, and was wondering why there were so few subscribers to most communities or even zero sometimes. Feels like changing this to include all subscribers would be really helpful?

Strange! Do you get the heart racing feeling when the meds are actually active, or only in that time before the meds kick in? The closest I’ve gotten to this is that I’ll often wake up to take my first dose of medicine about an hour before I really need to get up. If I’m anxious about something happening that day (work, appointment, etc) then I’ll stress myself out trying to get myself to fall asleep before my meds kick in, knowing I won’t get a chance to fall back asleep again, and that anxiety sort of causes a faster heart rate. But not really related to the medicine, as it’s the same anxious reaction I would get back in college when I’d stay up too late studying for a test and then desperately try to fall asleep only to stay awake the whole night before the test 😅 lol

Any chance it’s something like that, anxiety/stress related?

I think it’s definitely a weird & difficult balance to try and hit - grow enough to sustain enough active, interesting communities for folks to want to stick around longterm, but not big enough to turn into whatever reddit/twitter/other sites have become. I’m not really sure how to do that, and my only main thought so far as a brand new user here is that it was surprisingly confusing, at least for someone like me with very little technical knowledge/etc. I definitely had to take a sort of “leap of faith” and power through the confusingness to get to this point where I have an account, an instance, am interacting, etc, but I am a little worried that other communities/people who would help create and build awesome communities on here will be confused or discouraged enough to not make it past understanding the site, instances/communities, finding communities they’re interested in, etc.

Edit: rereading your comment, I especially felt the “seeing little activity” thing. I’ve been poking around trying to find communities to subscribe to, to build a page for myself that offers enough of the things I’m interested in, but have been finding most communities empty, mostly empty, or nonexistent, which is unfortunate. I know that logically I can create my own communities if I want, but I don’t really know how to do that and start from scratch, so I unfortunately then just end up not being a part of communities I’d be interested in being a part of, and I imagine many others hit the same wall.