In the book’s final chapters, Hari explores the different ways in which we (and society) need to change to stop the depression and anxiety pandemic from spreading. He quotes Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti who said: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society”. Hari includes ways to change how we have been living and reconnect to our community, our jobs, and our values to change our current situation. He quotes Allen Barbour, an internist at Stanford University, who had said that depression isn’t a disease it is a normal response to abnormal life experiences. Hari suggests a third option, “largely a reaction to the way we are living”.

A broken brain (due to lack of serotonin).

He writes that in the past, there have been two ways of looking at depression: In Lost Connections, Hari takes a closer look at how we should be living. He quotes the Dutch economic historian Rutger Bregman who says: “Having fulfilling work is seen as a freakish exception, like winning the lottery, instead of how we should all be living.” But according to Hari, finding a meaningful way to pay the bills is rare.

Having control of your work situation makes all the difference. Even if the work is the same, the amount of control or influence I have over it determines how positively invested I am to get the job done. I have seen this to be true in my own work life. Hari further delves into a study of the British civil service offices conducted in the 1970s that found that the workers’ degree of control of their work had a massive influence on their likelihood of becoming depressed. In other words, the study found that most people hate their jobs. 87% of people are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged”.Only 13% of people are engaged in their work.

Hari includes a study done by the polling company Gallup in 20 to determine how people worldwide feel about their work. The chapter I found most interesting focused on how much of an influence our work life has on our mental health. There are other ways in which we can reconnect to relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety.Īlso read: Understanding social anxiety and the fear of talking to strangers Daily grind While antidepressants did not work for Hari, he argues that all hope is not lost.

“My experience was straight from the textbook: far from being an outlier, I had the typical antidepressant experience.” When Hari read the results, he realised that his experience with antidepressants was normal. Unfortunately, they also found that within a year, half of the patients were fully depressed again. They found that the drugs worked as 67% of patients did feel better.

Hari looks at a study completed in the late 1990s when scientists wanted to test the effects of new SSRI antidepressants.

Lost connections hari