Is depression more common today than throughout history?

Source for what user?

t. College freshman

> but can't afford to get out of the city.
If by afford you mean financially, that's bullshit. Prices are far lower in the countryside than they are in the cities 99% of the time. If you mean because of social judgment than it's true or as true as they want it to be.

Nope, we just have gotten better at recognizing and categorizing it. There's a reason so many cultures had to write down laws against suicide and why it was one of the ten commandments, life back then was a fight and a constant struggle against nature and men. You can look at many texts of people who wind up killing themselves "for no apparent reason", people who become isolated and distant, etc. and back then people had no way of describing it. It's kind of like PTSD and how it wasn't really talked about until WWI and then it was described as shell shock as an attempt to disguise the fact that constant war and fighting would leave you depressed and dispondant, the higher ups tried to convince the public that it was "concussive blasts from the shells that would vibrate the brain and cause minute damage that built up over time".
Recognizing and more accurately diagnosing a problem does not mean there is suddenly an explosion in the number of the problem.

Too old to be considered a College freshman user.

If you have a different opinion I would be glad to actually hear it out.

My opinion is not obsolete and hence the term opinion.

literally nothing to do on the country-side. a grand total of fuckall.
t. hick

You did not even bother to support your argument with anything. Just pulled words out of your ass with no solid evidence. How is this logical? You are just romanticizing the past by talking about how 'manly' people were and just sucked it up, while you are not addressing the issue that people did not know what depression was at that time.

Henry VI's"madness" looks far more likely to be a case of severe depression than anything else, based on the vague references to it.

Bullshit, depression is ancient. When we screwed neanderthals, we actually picked up genes that increase the risk of depression.

>everyone is totally oblivious
In my experience, people are much more aware than this quite gives them credit for.
I don't think most people know how to approach someone who they think might be depressed. Not that I do, mind you.

Anything because all I read was a bunch of bullshit that at best was based on anecdotal evidence.

If I was to suggest that people in the past were rarely sad apart from the death of loved ones then I would get 50 replies telling me that I am "Le romanticizing Le past :^)".

Of course the only acceptable answer on this board would be thanks to the jewish aided inventions of HD televisions, GMO foods, mcdonalds, the internet, antidepressants and automobiles... people have never been happier!

There are no surveys to check so no definite answer can emerge.
Yes. This was so prevalent in romanticist literature that there was a word for it - weltschmerz (world-pain/sadness, the feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction with the whole world).
You would be wrong, that's all. And why the strawman?

0 people being diagnosed with depression in the past could equally be due to them lacking the modern diagnosis of depression.

>muh Jews

Probably. All expressions of emotion have been declining in the English language for a couple hundred years, positive emotion especially.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2016.1260528

Idk if that's just the English speaking world or what.

I would feel no surprise if depression has become more common thanks to an increase in secular thought and the feeling of purposeless brought about by our level of technology

Actually PTSD having a physical origin in some cases is a theory regaining steam. A lot of collegiate and NFL football players exhibit symptons of PTSD

>quiet rural lifestyle
Spoken like a true urbanite, life in the countryside is periods of intense fucking hard labor and periods doing absolutely nothing, in the latter periods there is nowhere to go and nothing stimulating to do except maybe get yourself stupid drunk

thing is even the rural lifestyle is a modern invention

people didn't sit on a thousand acres and farm it by themselves only interacting with wife on a daily basis

There are definitely records of people in history suffering from depression.

Its possible that the bizarre behavior of the wanli emperor could be attributed to depression. He basically refused to do his job for the last 20 years of his reign which was a pretty pronounced reason for the decline of the mings.

I think what we now today as depression has always been there. There are definitely accounts of people just sinking down into despondency in the past. As to whether people are more depressed today; I think this is a question onto which people will project a lot.

Can we have more examples of possibly depressed, or just extremely unhappy, people in history?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegesias_of_Cyrene
>He argued that happiness is impossible to achieve, and that the goal of life was the avoidance of pain and sorrow. Conventional values such as wealth, poverty, freedom, and slavery are all indifferent and produce no more pleasure than pain. Cicero claims that Hegesias wrote a book called Death by Starvation, which persuaded so many people that death is more desirable than life, that Hegesias was banned from teaching in Alexandria.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Maʿarri
>Al-Maʿarri held an anti-natalist view, in line with his general pessimism, suggesting that children should not be born to spare them of the pains of life.
>Even on al-Maʿarri's epitaph, he wanted it written that his life was a wrong done by his father and not one that was done by himself.

neat

Read Ecclesiastics bro.

The version with "hevel" not the one with "meaningless".

Recently we've been more physically deficient in vitamins especially D and minerals which can give off depression symptoms.

But in general life is easier now that it's ever been. It's easier to be depressed when you're not fucking dying of starvation or a bear. No motivation to love or live.

>Tfw you realize the neanderthals were actually ancient sjws, letting in stupid Homo sapien sapiens into thier country for the sake of diversity, and not being able to defend because they felt depressed.

I have no data but I would make the assumption that depression is largely tied to a modern way of life. It seems like the less busy you are and more intelligent, the higher your chances of depression.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if people who slaved away in fields all day in some kind of "natural" environment were actually happier than people living as middle class in the western world. I wouldn't be surprised if people who were less intelligent were happier.

I've been in the psych ward twice and they haven't been able to diagnose anu psychosis regardless of the fact that I show symptoms. I told them it was more of a philosophical issue than some kind of psychotic one and it seems like that was actually the case.

Sometimes I think that people will evolve to become so intelligent that they realise life is completely futile, worthless, subjective and meaningless but then it becomes clear that evolution would most likely work against these people. It's pure delusion that life has value but people who think like this will obviously be outbred by dogmatic idiots without a clue.

Fuck my family is dying of black plague type depression was more common back then.

Fuck my meaningless scripted suburban life type depression is more common today.

No, Toska is equivalent to ennui, not depression.

>You did not even bother to support your argument with anything. Just pulled words out of your ass with no solid evidence. How is this logical? You are just romanticizing the past by talking about how 'manly' people were and just sucked it up, while you are not addressing the issue that people did not know what depression was at that time.

No shit dumbass. Hes probably conservative, has never worked a real day of work in his life and doesn't understand true hardship.

Hes a lazy moron from /pol/ who believes only in what he feels or has experienced himself.
Look at how he speaks to justify his argument, its all about what hes observed and not what information is available on the subject.

Sometimes I wonder if it's just a coincidence that sociology as a field began with a study on suicides, in the middle of industrial urbanisation of the 19th century.

Many of my relatives going back to the late 1800s at least died in Asylums with depression related illnesses usually brought on by dead children or at least the one I know the full story about never recovered after his daughter who was a nurse died following tuberculosis outbreak.

Although it's not necessarily as extreme as depression the word melancholy is hardly rare throughout any era.

I want to say it's worse now but really I'll only end up espousing my own political beliefs for why the world is shit now.

What I think is beyond debate though is that we live in the information age and the influence of the media on peoples expectations is undeniably negative.

The modern Westerner lives a life so completely free of struggle that they must invent some

You're actually a faggot

This is legit the dumbest shit I've read in weeks. Off yourself

There is some truth to this. When most of your daily thought is dedicated to basic survival struggles you don't have a lot of time to ruminate about killing yourself.

You're a fucking idiot

Depression is not the same as your pitiful identiti crisis

Life is meaningless because meaning in itself is, always and by definition, given and never inherent

Therefore your conjunction of "life is meaningless" is, in fact, rendered meaningless

Bullshit. People have always killed themselves, ever since recorded history began. Anything before that we can hardly tell.

Furthermore equating depression with suicidal thoughts is completely retard.

Honestly, this entire thread is. Depression is not "feeling a little down". Depression is not "life is meaningless :(". Depression is not pondering suicide. It's a clinical illness and you're all part of the reason why people think it's"no big deal, just get over it :)".

And no, I'm not self diagnosed. I'm a simple, happy man with few problems in life.

In inherently more common today. "Depression" and "narcissim" are virtually synonymous. Both are centered around the 'me me me' without regard to anything or anyone else. "my feelings" "NO one understands me" you cant know how I feel" and depression requires INTENSIVE attention from the depressed support web to attend to, but never alleviates the state.

The world we live in today is sinfully narcissitic to the point of societies implosion. its only natural that as the world devotes itself to itself, fewer 'care' resources are exist to be shared. Most are simply to absorbed with "worrying about themself to treat the true root of depression: our meaningless, soulless society.

Worry and annoyance everlasting,
bitter waking, troubled sleep,
I labour in vain, with languid expression,
destined to grievous torment,
and all the ill which one could ever
say or think, without hope of relief,
torment me immoderately;
and thus I can neither be healed nor die.

Princes, pray to God that very soon
he may grant me death, if he does not wish by any other means
to remedy the ill in which I painfully languish

t. Christine de Pisan 14th cenutry

People have always struggled with depression, but often times lacked the education or time to express it.

bait

You can always get at least half a dozen replies when you call depressed people special snowflakes.

It's because you know 90% of Veeky Forums is depressed at any one time. :^)

4/10

In my opinion, it all comes down to a few simple things.

The first bit is that life today is more stressful than life as a dirt farmer under some feudal king. Back then, you pretty much knew what you were going to do. You knew you would never be the king, you knew you would never get married to the hot princess. Maybe you might leave the home and become a merchant or a minstrel or something, but people's lives were kind of predestined. With how it is now, you have every child in the western world being told as they grow up that they can be president, they can be an astronaut, they will change the world! And it's no one's fault really, all parents want their children to be special, but when that child fails to show results it puts them under a lot of stress from an early age.

The second bit is that it has been shown throughout a multitude of studies that stress can trigger certain mental disorders in individuals. This is called the diathesis-stress model. With this in mind, it makes sense that as society gets more stressful, mental disorders become more prevalent.

The last bit is a little laced with romanticism, so take it with a grain of salt. It is my personal belief that there are a few "attention seeker" types out there who abuse mental disorders in order to be a special snowflake. I'm sure most of you know one. They aren't the majority, they just happen the be the loudest about their "problems". THEY are the ones who give those with legit issues a bad name.

>nothing stimulating to do except maybe get yourself stupid drunk
what about reading, writing, painting, hiking, etc, etc.

>Thinking life as a pre-industrial farmer not stressful
>Implying you weren't constantly under threat of starvation from the commonplace famines, raiders or bandits coming to burn your house and rape your womenfolk, or the crushing burden of pre-progressive taxes, and all in a system where you were you had little real legal voice.

there's a dozen other things that could go wrong but It'd be wasted trying to make teenagers understand basic history

prove it

now that's what i call samefagiging

Probably just more outspoken through the internet.

Why are people depressed? There's always going to be people who look at the bad side of things, even though life has gotten better overall. You see it with rich people who have way more than poor people yet they're depressed. So it's not about what you have or your situation it's how you perceive it and compare yourself to how you THINK you or the average person in your position should be.

You could say it's false expectations/being ungrateful.

>I SHOULD have this but I don't.
>I SHOULD feel this way but I don't.

When you set a goal and it's not fulfilled you feel like shit. So if you have a goal of "being happy" then you'll never be happy because whatever you achieve that will make you "happy" you'll stop caring and want something else. you'll keep moving goalposts and never be satisfied with anything.

people need to learn to be content and remember that the past was way worse.

there's also the paradox of choice. more choices = less satisfaction with any choice you make. so you just have to accept that there's an infinite amount of things you can do but you can only do a few and then you're dead. just don't sweat it and chill out.

acceptance of being limited in what you can do. gratefulness for what you have. awareness of the inevitable end to all life. remembering how terrible the past was, etc. can help minimize it.

could be because now that we are wealthier we can afford to be grumpy dickbags without serious consequences

>Thread about the history of depression
>Someone has to blame the jews

for what purpose