The Art of Avoiding Depression

In every way, depression is a growing problem. Rates of depression have steadily climbed over the last 50 years and are significantly higher in those born after 1945 than in those born before. In addition, the average age of onset of a first depressive episode is steadily decreasing-it is now mid-20s whereas it once was mid-30s. Cross-cultural data show that the United States has a higher rate of depression than almost any other country, and that as Asian countries Westernize their rates of depression increase correspondingly.

The data make it abundantly clear that these changes are not the product of individual biochemistry or of family genetics but of pathology within our culture.

There are many depressogenic factors operating in our culture. Information overload is one. Since 1945 we have accumulated at least as much information as we had throughout history until then. The more information there is, the more we end up essentially skimming the surface. This leads to a style of thinking in which we see only the big picture and miss the depth of detail. As a result, when we are faced with difficult problems, we do not recognize the many small steps that solutions typically require; things feel overwhelming and insurmountable, leading us to give up before we even start.

Our growing reliance on technology also contributes to depression. One of technology's main values is speed. But speed has warped our perspective of time so that we expect things to happen at ever-faster rates. Embracing speed as a cultural value has advantages when you're dealing with things that can actually be done quickly, such as electronic mail, but it is a profound disadvantage when applied to other domains of life, like building a relationship. You can't instantly learn to be a good judge of other people's character or instantly build good relationships with your colleagues at your new job. But people want a good relationship, and they want it now, without having a clue what the steps are and how long it takes to achieve each one. They expect instant intimacy and fool themselves into thinking they've achieved it by sleeping with somebody before they know who the person is.

Depending on whose data you believe, Americans watch between four and seven hours of television per day. This has insidious effects on our culture, such as reducing our tolerance for frustration. Watching major problems occur and get resolved in 30 minutes, with two commercial breaks really does lead us to underestimate the complexity of things. We're willing to vote for Presidential candidates on the basis of eight-second sound bites. No wonder people got enormously frustrated when the Gulf War went into a second day.

It has became fashionable to call depression a disease, to medicalize it. And certainly neurotransmitters like serotonin and norepinephrine are involved in depression. But if you ask the more critical question-is biology the cause of depression?-the best data suggest that genes account for about one in five cases. The idea that a chemical imbalance causes depression, rather than reflects it, ignores the fact that the brain's biochemistry responds to our ways of thinking-in short, to life experience.