Mohtalim

Over the past half-century, the prevalence of unipolar depression in affluent countries has jumped tenfold.

It's my opinion that peasants eking out a living by subsistence farming were pretty damn depressed most of the time. Nobody cared enough to diagnose them, though.

This stat is like the increase in autisum diagnoses. As public awareness of the condition spreads, more people get tested and more people get diagnosed.

It's kind of funny how he makes it sound like having no close friends is a deliberate choice.

George wrote:It's kind of funny how he makes it sound like having no close friends is a deliberate choice.

Well if you don't live in the middle of nowhere, it kind of is.

I know that it's everyone's fault in my previous social group that we are growing apart. We just don't make time to meet up anymore. We'll send around emails reminiscing about how we used to be out in DC until 2am and had fun, but then when someone tries and schedule something, only a few people show up. Of course, people's priorities are changing and most of us are focused on our careers right now.

Dwindlehop wrote:It's my opinion that peasants eking out a living by subsistence farming were pretty damn depressed most of the time. Nobody cared enough to diagnose them, though.

Actually what's interesting is that some of the poorest people are the least depressed. Well as long as they have enough food to eat. Usually their priorities are in order, don't have unreasonable expectations, and know how the simple things in life are usually the most fruitful.

Jason wrote:Actually what's interesting is that some of the poorest people are the least depressed. Well as long as they have enough food to eat. Usually their priorities are in order, don't have unreasonable expectations, and know how the simple things in life are usually the most fruitful.

Not at all. Basic survival consumes all of their time and energy, so they aren't able to consider what they don't have. They also generally lack specific knowlege of conditions elsewhere so they wouldn't know what to dream about even if they did have time.

My life sucks, i guess being lonely is a perk