Lost Connections
Johann Hari
Lost Connections
Johann Hari
Hari's case that depression and anxiety come largely from how we live, and that reconnection can help
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- 12 key ideas
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- Published 2018
Introduction
Johann Hari, a British journalist, took antidepressants for thirteen years and was still depressed. He then spent three years travelling more than 40,000 miles and carried out more than two hundred interviews, with social scientists and with people who had been through depression and anxiety, to ask what really causes them. He argues that the main causes lie less in our brains than in the way we live: depression and anxiety, he says, grow out of disconnection.
The book has three parts. Part One questions the story that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and is fixed mainly by pills. Part Two sets out nine causes: seven social and psychological forms of disconnection, and the real role of genes and brain changes. Part Three describes seven kinds of reconnection that Hari calls social or psychological antidepressants, based on research that he says is still at an early stage.
Note: many psychiatrists and researchers dispute parts of this book, especially its account of antidepressants, so its claims are presented here as Hari's arguments, not as settled fact. Hari himself writes that some reputable scientists believe these drugs genuinely help a minority of people, and: “If you feel helped by them, and the positives outweigh the side effects, you should carry on.” Do not stop or change any medication without talking to your doctor.
- 1Hari argues, drawing on Irving Kirsch's analysis of the trial data, that antidepressants did far less than he had been told
- 2Hari reports that the serotonin theory began as a cautious guess and, according to the scientists he interviewed, was never backed by good evidence
- 3Hari argues that depression is often an understandable response to life, pointing to the psychiatric “grief exception” and to research by George Brown and Tirril Harris
- 4Hari names nine causes of depression and anxiety, most of them forms of disconnection, starting with work that gives people no control
- 5Hari reports John Cacioppo's research suggesting that loneliness is not only a result of depression but can also cause it
- 6Hari argues, drawing on Tim Kasser, that “junk values” built around money, possessions and status make people more depressed and anxious
- 7Hari reports that childhood trauma, especially emotional abuse, sharply raises the risk of depression in adulthood, according to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study
- 8Hari adds three more causes: loss of status and respect, being cut off from the natural world, and losing a hopeful or secure future
- 9Hari accepts that genes and brain changes are real causes, but argues that they work together with what happens in our lives
- 10Hari argues that the answer is reconnection, starting with other people, and calls such changes social antidepressants
- 11Hari describes early attempts to reconnect people with meaningful work and meaningful values, and to acknowledge childhood trauma
- 12Hari ends with ways to quiet the self and restore a secure future, and argues that depression is a signal we should listen to
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