Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions

by Johann Hari

your distress is not a malfunction. It is a signal—a necessary signal.

But this pain isn’t your enemy, however much it hurts (and Jesus, I know how much it hurts). It’s your ally—leading you away from a wasted life and pointing the way toward a more fulfilling one.

You can try to muffle the signal. That will lead you to many wasted years when the pain will persist.

We have lost faith in the idea of anything bigger or more meaningful than the individual, and the accumulation of more and more stuff.

Margaret Thatcher said, “There’s no such thing as society, only individuals and their families”—and, all over the world, her viewpoint won. We believed it—even those of us who thought we rejected it.

you need to see the sanity in this sadness.

Depression and anxiety might, in one way, be the sanest reaction you have.6 It’s a signal, saying—you shouldn’t have to live this way, and if you aren’t helped to find a better path, you will be missing out on so much that is best about being human.

grief is necessary. We grieve because we have loved. We grieve because the person we have lost mattered to us.

and demanding they engage with the real problems that need to be solved.

You’re not going to be able to deal with this problem alone. It’s not a flaw in you.

grown up in a village in Turkey, and she thought of the whole village as her home. But when she came to Europe, she learned that you are supposed to think of home as just your own apartment, and she felt alone there.

All these depressed and anxious people, all over the world—they are giving us a message. They are telling us something has gone wrong with the way we live.

The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model by S. Nassir Ghaemi. See also: John Read and Pete Saunders, A Straight-Taking Introduction to the Causes of Mental Health Problems

“Rethinking funding priorities in mental health research,” British Journal of Psychiatry

De-Medicalizing Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition