Lost Connections – Uncovering the real causes of depression and the unexpected solutions

This book was written by Johann Hari (January, 2018). The publishers say:

“What really causes depression and anxiety – and how can we really solve them?

New York Times best-selling author Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child, and started taking anti-depressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true – and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.

On a 40,000-mile journey across the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are not caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. In fact, they are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. Hari´s journey took him from a mind- blowing series of experiments in Baltimore, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin. They taught him a radically different story about why so many of us are in deep pain – and how we can find our way back.

Once he had uncovered nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions – ones that work …”

Read more here.

“The push and pull between ‘reactive’ depression (the kind that relates to our environment and life experience) and ‘endogenous’ depression (where something goes wrong in the brain) forms the basis of Lost Connections, an eye-opening, highly detailed though sometimes frustrating investigation into the causes and cures of depression.”

The Guardian newspaper review of this book says: “The push and pull between “reactive” depression (the kind that relates to our environment and life experience) and “endogenous” depression (where something goes wrong in the brain) forms the basis of Lost Connections, an eye-opening, highly detailed though sometimes frustrating investigation into the causes and cures of depression.

The book is part personal odyssey, in which Hari gets to grips with the flaws in his own treatment, and part scholarly reflection, where he sifts through the varying perspectives of scientists, psychologists and people with depression. In the first half, he examines the social and psychological factors that can cause reactive depression, which include hardship, trauma, loneliness, lack of fulfilment, absence of status and disconnection from nature. He casts a damning eye on the research practices of the pharmaceutical industry, which has a clear investment in the endogenous argument, and deftly debunks the popular notion that depression stems from faulty genes …”

Read more here.

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