and found ourselves shut away in our own homes”. Reflecting on an American study indicating a sharp fall in active involvement in community organisations between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, Hari observes that “across the Western world, we stopped banding together. “Loneliness,” he writes, “hovers over our culture today like a thick smog.” Meaningful contact is something we are innately designed to crave – it’s in our very DNA – but our socio-economic system is predicated on individualism. The notion that depression occurs because of some intrinsic flaw divorced from social context – a biological problem requiring a biomedical solution – doesn't seem to hold true in most cases.įar from being a defect, Hari argues that depression is actually a rational and self-preservatory response to the fragmentation of community life in the contemporary world. He cites research indicating that, in many cases of so-called 'endogenous' depression, the depressed person had suffered some kind of serious emotional distress in the year before the onset of their depression. In Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions, Hari interrogates this dubious taxonomy. By contrast, “reactive” depression was caused by external events such as bereavement, trauma or some other adversity. Received wisdom held that “endogenous” depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain antidepressants were supposed to solve the problem by restoring the brain’s natural balance. Read more.Like many people suffering from depression, Johann Hari spent many years taking the antidepressant drug Seroxat, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, or SSRI. It is an epic journey that will change how we think about one of the biggest crises in our culture today. Once he had uncovered nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions – ones that work. Hari’s journey took him from a mind-blowing series of experiments in Baltimore, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin.

In fact, they are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true – and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.Īcross the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are not caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. (2018) What really causes depression and anxiety – and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking antidepressants when he was a teenager.

Lost connections johann