Lost Connections

Lost Connections

In Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions, Hari interrogates this dubious taxonomy. 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. 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.
Far 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. “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.
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 . . . and found ourselves shut away in our own homes”. Changes in working life – the so-called “gig economy” of zero-hours contracts and precarious labour – have exacerbated a sense of isolation and insecurity. (Paradoxically, “emotional labour” has become increasingly paramount: in a services-based economy, it’s no longer enough just to put a shift in. You have to visibly enjoy it.) People feel disempowered and disconnected from one another, and this state of affairs is fundamentally unnatural.