His thoroughly researched and fascinating argument is that the key to treating depression is in re-establishing lost connections in our lives. He uncovers the truth that depression isn’t just a biological ailment, but an environmental and psychological one too. He explores the cutting-edge science of curing people without medication. In Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, Johann Hari explores the lesser-known side of depression and anxiety. But what if I told you this might not be the whole picture? Most of us accept the explanation that it’s something wrong with brain chemistry. It’s a huge problem, so we must have some sense of what causes it, right? There are many theories, but we don’t know exactly why depression happens, or why it’s becoming more prevalent. And those numbers only seem to be going up.
The World Health Organization estimates a whopping 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. If you don’t have it, you probably know someone who does. And this approach to life makes us feel terrible.You don’t have to look very far to find someone who suffers from depression. It leads us to misunderstand our most basic instincts. But John has proven that this is a denial of human history, and a denial of human nature. These ideas now run so deep in our culture that we even offer them as feel-good bromides to people who feel down-as if it will lift them up. We have begun to think: I will look after myself, and everybody else should look after themselves, as individuals. We have started to believe that doing things alone is the natural state of human beings, and the only way to advance. We say to each other: “Nobody can help you except you.” It made me realize: we haven’t just started doing things alone more, in every decade since the 1930s. “I kept noticing a self-help cliché that people say to each other all the time, and share on Facebook incessantly. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions
They snowball into an ever colder place.” Indeed, they receive judgment, and criticism, and this accelerates their retreat from the world. The tragedy, John realized, is that many depressed and anxious people receive less love, as they become harder to be around. This snowball effect, he learned, can be reversed-but to help a depressed or severely anxious person out of it, they need more love, and more reassurance, than they would have needed in the first place. Lonely people are scanning for threats because they unconsciously know that nobody is looking out for them, so no one will help them if they are hurt. John calls this a “snowball” effect, as disconnection spirals into more disconnection. You start to be afraid of the very thing you need most. You start to be more likely to take offense where none was intended, and to be afraid of strangers. “Protracted loneliness causes you to shut down socially, and to be more suspicious of any social contact, he found.
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