Why are we so depressed?

Hi All,

Why is depression so prevalent in modern society?
Is society to blame? The world is cruel and unforgiving?
Or is it the individuals problem?.. our expectations too high... we are too sensitive

Well, I can only speak for myself but I am pretty sure I just feel the way I should feel under the circumstances.

You know? Some people who are depressed say that technically, they shouldn't be. That they have everything going for them except that they just feel depressed for no obvious reason. Me? Nope. I know exactly why I'm depressed. My "sense of hopelessness" is more than just all in my head. It's not something my subconscious fabricated. There are real reasons for it.

I also know why I am depressed, and they are very good reasons as well. I have cronic pain, leading to few job opportunities, leading to financial distress, and so it goes...

But then I suppose there are some people who out of FOMO or unrealistic expectations, experience depression, but to me that is another category.

Quoting from the book, "The Road Less Travelled"; Life is hard.

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Figure there is Internet and social media in modern society. This allows for the existence of depression to be publicly vented and shared easier. It circulates. Thus the more people know about it, the more it feels like something is more prevalent than before.

I always wonder how much people hid their depression back in the days before advanced communicative technology. It must've been hard.

It's complicated but socially it's triggered by - mass surveillance, behaviour modification, commodification, anomie, and precarity.

Cause life is hell but we're supposed to pretend it's not.

in real life, i have never seen anyone as fragile as me. it is strange.

Because modern life happened.

I think it's just a legacy passed down from our ancestors, I mean what did they have to be happy about ? Being eaten by a sabre tooth tiger : /

Depressive Realism

Depression's greatest trick is convincing you that it's truth.

I was thinking more of 50s,60s and 70s but i know what you mean.

I wonder what the internal world of someone who would say they are "happy" feels like. A few weeks ago I watched a "48 Hours" (a true crime show) episode in which people were talking about a college girl who was so vivacious and friendly and happy. She asked one of her friends "What does it feel like to be sad?" They related that to illustrate how happy she always was. She was strangled to death by her boyfriend, but that's beside the point (or is it?).

It is truth, but a happy lie is much better for an easy life.

I don't know, but if the world advances into a future like the Culture series, humans will be so genetically modified they can secret chemicals into their brain whenever they want, and whatever they want.

i guess you can do that now too lol, but illegal and expensive. also leads to poor health

I hate to say it like this, but perhaps we recognize the essential absurdity, darkness, and futility in the world and in ourselves. That's not to say that's the absolute truth, but subjective truth is all we can access.

I'm reminded of the movie Melancholia. The first part deals with a depressed mess of a woman on her wedding day. She messes the whole thing up with her personality issues and inability to be happy. In the second part, the world is ending. Her sister who is all about order and trying to make things work totally loses her sh!t while the depressed sister becomes the one who is calm and collected. So maybe depression is a coping mechanism?

This is the first time in history that anybody cares that you're depressed, and that it's safe to admit that you're depressed.

For millennia, mental health care was either your family can be bothered to take care of you or you get kicked out to go die. Until well into modern society, letting anybody know that you're mentally different was a sure ticket to abuse (still is for some) -- conformity was demanded of all. By the 1950s, mental health care in wealthy countries advanced to throwing you into a sanitarium where you'd be abused and forgotten. But now we have a giant industry devoted to selling you stuff which shines a bright light onto mental illness.

More openness to discuss the problem(s) pertaining to mental illness; higher population which means more people to have some (potential) diagnosis; technology playing some part since our brains haven't evolved as fast as our fast pacing society that increasingly relies on technology rather than the traditional communal gathering. More that I probably cannot think of right now.

Mine likely has biological components based on what little I can gather from past generations' lifestyle habits that tend to correlate with depression. A build up of life events, especially as I was entering my teenage years, that spiraled over time. Thankfully we live in a time where more information and antidepressants are being used (even though there's some reluctance based on my own personal experiences pertaining to myself and not made as a universal truth...)

life is cruel and it's sad.

because of other people (they are ****s), having needs met (nothing really left to do, rewarding activities less appealing than addictive activities because of marketing, other people no longer really matter, decline of community and culture), no free space to grow into (no pioneering, all land owned and defended, all objects accounted for), science (all easy discoveries made, discovery, truth, novelty is inaccessible to everyday people)