😶#26: Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How To Find Hope | Part 2 | by Johann Hari - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
How does Disconnection from Status and Respect, Disconnection from Nature, Disconnection from a Secure Future, our brains and our genes make us more depressed and anxious?
Hello courageous people! 👋 Welcome to Edition 26.
This week, we are reading 📚 Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How To Find Hope | Part 2 | 🖋 by Johann Hari.
This week we have the second half of this amaaaaazing book!!!!! If you missed last week’s edition here’s the link.
We are talking all about Nature, Status and Respect, a Hopeful and Secure Future and the role of our Genes and our Brains!
So let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.
🏆5️⃣ Disconnection from Status and Respect
“It’s hard to describe what depression and acute anxiety feel like. They are such disorientating states that they seem to escape language, but we have a few clichés that we return to. We often say, for example, that we feel “down.” It sounds like a metaphor—but I don’t think it quite is.
When I feel depressed, I feel as if I have been almost physically pushed down. I want to keep my head down, my body slumped and low. Other people who’ve experienced depression have said the same.” - page 141
This particular observation ultimately led Robert Sapolsky—leading professor of biology and neurology at Stanford—to a fascinating discovery while studying our closest animal relatives.
He was living with a colony of baboons when clear patterns started emerging on who was (and who wasn’t) the alpha male of the colony. The alpha got to have sex with whoever he wanted, got to have first dibs on the food and got to shove others out of the prime shady spot on a hot day to take it for himself. Robert nicknamed the alpha baboon Solomon.
At the other end of the pecking order was a scrawny, feeble creature who he called Job. He was pushed, shoved and scratched. His hair would fall out and he would continuously tremble.
Part of Robert’s job as a researcher was to figure out who was the most stressed in the colony - unsurprisingly, it was Job.
“To avoid getting savaged, the baboons with the lowest status would have to compulsively show that they knew they were defeated. They would do this by making what are called subordinance gestures—they lowered their heads, crawled on their bellies. It was how they signaled: Stop attacking me. I’m beaten. I’m no threat to you. I give up.
And here’s the striking thing. When a baboon is behaving this way—when nobody around him shows him any respect, and he’s been pushed to the bottom of the pile—he looks an awful lot like a depressed human being.” - page 144
These insights turned out to correlate directly to human society as well:
“The more unequal your society, the more prevalent all forms of mental illness are. The higher the inequality, the higher the depression.” - page 147
The research showed that in societies that are largely equal, like Norway, there were much lower levels of mental distress. Compare this to the USA where there is a huge disparity between classes and this correlated to much higher levels of distress.
The disparity causes us to have to think about our status a lot:
“Am I maintaining my position? Who’s threatening me? How far can I fall?” - page 147
The antidote to this particular type of disconnection is unfortunately not an easy one. We must work to dismantle hierarchies and create a place where all people can feel safe and comfortable.
But all these factors continue to make more and more sense when we put the picture together, don’t they?
🌳6️⃣ Disconnection from the Natural World
“I don’t do nature.” - page 150
Said Johann to his mountain guide Isabel Behnecke in the Canadian mountain town of Banff. Isabel is also a researcher at Oxford and was taking the opportunity to lead Johann on a hike while telling him of her work.
Specifically, she had found that animals across the board become extremely depressed when they live outside of their natural habitat. So naturally, she asked:
“What if humans become more depressed when we are deprived of access to the kind of landscape we evolved in too?” - page 154
Isabel holds strongly to the belief that we as humans are still just animals, with many of the same needs and requirements. Just because we have built these urban environments doesn’t mean they are necessarily good for us.
Case in point:
A study conducted at the University of Essex studied five thousand households in two groups. One that moved from a green, rural area to the city, and the other group who did the opposite.
The results were stark.
“The people who moved to green areas saw a big reduction in depression, and the people who moved away from green areas saw a big increase in depression.” - page 154
They even did follow up studies to check if other factors were at play, like crime, pollution and community engagement in these more rural communities. But the results came back the same when these were screened out - it’s the green space.
Humans have a natural sense of what is called “biophilia”.
“It’s an innate love for the landscapes in which humans have lived for most of our existence, and for the natural web of life that surrounds us and makes our existence possible.
Almost all animals get distressed if they are deprived of the kinds of landscape that they evolved to live in. A frog can live on land—it’ll just be miserable as hell and give up. Why, Isabel wonders would humans be the one exception to this rule?” - page 157
This point was proven again (and almost entirely by accident) in a State Prison in Southern Michigan in the 1970’s:
“Because of the way the prison was built, half the prisoners’ cells looked out over rolling farmland and trees, and half looked out onto bare brick walls.
An architect named Ernest Moore studied the medical records for these different groups of prisoners (who didn’t differ in any other way), and he found that if you were in the group who could see the natural world you were 24% less likely to get physically or mentally sick.” - page 159
In any other setting, finding a treatment which had such a great effect would be monumental. And here, with nature we have one which:
has no side effects
isn’t expensive
does not require a professional to prescribe it
excellent efficacy and evidence
One of the most compelling answers to our depression and anxiety has been right in front of us all along. 😌🌳
🏠7️⃣ Disconnection from a Hopeful or Secure Future
In Canada, the government treated First Nations people as if they were children, appointing themselves as the parental control over their lives. Some communities had been successful in regaining control from the government, while others hadn’t been.
There had been an increasing rate of suicide among First Nations people—the worst happening in 2016 when eleven First Nations people in a single reservation attempted suicide on one night—and a researcher by the name of Michael Chandler wanted to understand why:
“They developed nine ways to measure the control a tribal group had, and slowly, over time, they plotted this against the suicide statistics.
It turned out the communities with the highest control had the lowest suicide; and the communities with the lowest control had the highest suicide.” - page 165
The groups that had control over their land, their languages, schools, health services, police and governance were far better off, which leads us to the overall point for this section - Disconnection from a Hopeful or Secure Future.
Something happens when we are depressed in which our sense of having a future disappears. But what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
“Maybe losing a sense of the future makes you suicidal—or maybe being extremely depressed makes it hard to think about the future.” - page 168
The answer is the former. When we lose hope of having a future, this causes us to feel depressed. Here’s an example.
Johann had a friend at university called Angela. She got her masters’ degree but after finishing university she couldn’t find a job in which she could use her qualifications.
To make ends meet, she took a job at a call centre where the pressure was extremely high to make a certain number of calls per day and get through the script in its entirety for the call to be considered a “success”. If you didn’t do your job properly, you simply weren’t scheduled on again the next week.
Then Angela’s boyfriend became unwell and he couldn’t work, increasing the pressure on her shoulders even more. She would tremble and shake on the way to work every day.
“She realized one day that she could never shake off “that sense of having no future.” She couldn’t plan even a few days ahead. When she heard friends talking about mortgages and pensions, it sounded to her almost utopian—dispatches from a country she could only visit.
“It completely takes away any sense of identity that you might have, and replaces it with shame and worry and fear … What are you? I’m nothing.” - page 171
In order to overcome depression and anxiety—again, unfortunately not a quick or easy fix—we must re-secure a hopeful future.
🧠8️⃣ The Real Role of Brain Changes
“The story we have been told about our brains—that we are depressed and anxious because they are simply and spontaneously low in serotonin—is not, I knew by now, true.” - page 175
And while we have discovered through the course of this book many of the social and environmental causes of depression, there are still biological causes that are very real. That is what this final section is about - our genes and brain changes and the effects that they have on us.
The truth is, the brain scans of people who are anxious or depressed do look different. But a scan is also only a single snapshot. It doesn’t tell us what has happened before or what will happen next.
Our brains are constantly remodelling (in a process called neuroplasticity) in response to the things that are happening in our lives. So the seven social and psychological factors we have been working through do all legitimately change our brains - for better and for worse.
“Depression and anxiety are “not like a tumor, where something is growing in the brain because there is a real fuck-up in the tissue which precedes the psychological problems. It’s not like that. The distress caused by the outside world, and the changes inside the brain come together.” - page 178
If we tell people that their depression is simply caused by their brains is to hand them completely incorrect and misguided information. A map which won’t help them find their way back.
🧬9️⃣ The Real Role of Our Genes
How much, if any, of depression can be carried in our genes?
Scientists haven’t found a specific gene or set of genes that cause depression and anxiety, but there is a genetic factor.
“For depression, 37% of it is inherited, while for severe anxiety, it is between 30 and 40 percent. To give you a comparison, how tall you are is 90% inherited.” - page 181
But here’s the twist, although it is inheritable, these genes have to be switched on or off by our environments. That is,
“If you have a particular flavour of 5-HTT (the gene) you have a greatly increased risk of depression but only in a certain environment.” - page 181
For example:
“If you carried this gene, the study showed, you were more likely to become depressed but only if you had experienced a terribly stressful event, or a great deal of childhood trauma.
If those bad things hadn’t happened to you, even if you had the gene that related to depression, you were no more likely to become depressed than anyone else.
So genes increase your sensitivity, sometimes significantly. But they aren’t—in themselves—the cause.” - page 181
Interesting, huh?
Another week (well, two weeks) and another book down!!! I truly hope that this has helped shed some light on the nature of anxiety and depression, and the things we can do—and can’t do perhaps 🤷♀️—to change it.
Until next week my friends,
Eleanor ❤️🙏
🧠 Resources & Links
🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services
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📕 Next week’s book
Coming out next Friday 29th July 2022 is #27:
📚 Atomic Habits
🖋 by James Clear
“No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.”