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BBC:
Mr Brown, now 24, dropped out of college and spent the following years at home - gaming, in chat rooms and reading about politics.
He became almost entirely immersed in an online world of "echo chambers" where he felt the pull of extremism and cybercrime.
Mr Brown, from Ashton, Cornwall, says he became increasingly "eccentric" and eventually lost touch with reality.
"I can count the number of times I went out in a seven-year period on both of my hands," he says.
...
He finally decided to seek help and ended up taking part in the Real Ideas Organisation's (RIO) Game Changer programme, which aims to encourage young people to develop skills and overcome any issues they face before getting them into work, education or training.
7 years. Not bad. Can anyone beat that?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by krait6 on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:46PM (3 children)
Billy Brown has agoraphobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoraphobia [wikipedia.org] and he also seems to suffer from depression. For someone in that situation it can be difficult to find social situations that are "safe" because society tends to pass on expectations such as "you should be working at a job like the rest of us". You can see it in the comments to this story, too. Someone in my family suffers from post-traumatic stress, and (for now) the results are very similar.
What I'm interested in is who Billy Brown is today and what he's learned from his experiences. The game he's come up with sounds like it's fun and helps people connect in a friendly way, and I for one would like to try it. Unfortunately the article doesn't seem to name it nor give a link to further information about it. If information on this is found, please post a link in a comment to this story.
Thanks
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:37PM
To me, the comments tend to promote the expectation that "Some people should be forced to enable other people's mental illnesses."
Ultimately, discomfort is what drove this young man to choose another path; what if had been faced with [economic] discomfort much earlier, before his mental state deteriorated even more? You're not doing these people any favors by just handing them a check each month and then pretending they don't exist anymore, which is the only explanation for happened here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:42PM
First world problems. If they had to live in a place like most of humanity, they would have no fucking time for depression and agoraphobia. Now it's just a bunch of snowflakes with their snowflake minds unable to deal with reality enabled by society so they don't have to work. Just look at all the Nazis coming out of the woodwork - most are fucking losers that don't have to work to feed themselves.
So what do you expect if there was a "basic wage"? Happiness? Fuck no! More mental flakiness all around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @07:16AM
To me, the comments tend to promote the expectation that "Some people should be forced to enable other people's mental illnesses."
Ultimately, discomfort is what drove this young man to choose another path; what if he had been faced with [economic] discomfort much earlier, before his mental state deteriorated even more? You're not doing these people any favors by just handing them a check each month and then pretending they don't exist anymore, which is the only explanation for what happened here.