Why is depression a big thing today than the past decades, centuries, and millennia ago? Too much information? Freedom...

Too much information.

in the past people attributed feelings of unhappiness to very present and obvious reasons to be unhappy. we have less of those now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

But really it is this

It's not, we just call it by a different name. It's been called malaise, hypocondriasis, "the vapors", hysteria, a dark mood, yellow bile, we can trace depression back easily to the Greeks and even farther. Of course it's easy to assume that because we hear about depression more now that means more people are depressed, but that could be due to a myriad of factors like willingness to disclose mental health, willingness to seek help, or simply availability bias. Keep in mind the numbers are of course much larger when the population of the earth is 7.5 billion versus 500 million not even 400 years ago, but I would imagine percentage wise the rate is about the same. Some of our greatest presidents, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, suffered through documented periods of deep depression.

>big thing today

Too much information
>tfw to smart too be happy

The sheer number of historical people who killed themselves, "drowned their sorrows in alcohol" or "died of grief" makes me think it was pretty widespread.

>Le old times were better xDxdxDd meme

/thread

Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills knows this is the answer.

Psychiatrists and the medical diagnosis of depression are recent things, before that you'd just say "Mary has hysteria, that's why she hasn't gotten out of bed in a month" or "Mark is an awfully blue and grumpy fellow, always has been"

I'd argue that the 19th century was more depressing.

it's this
compare it to "demon possession" turning into "schizophrenia"

nihilism is a reaction to the existential depression

This. Holy fuck.

For the rich upperclass, hard earned wealth has made everyday struggle completely meaningless thus their life largely devoid of meaningful challenge.

For the poor, a lack of upward mobility means their daily struggles are meaningless as well since there is no eventual reward, only more drudgery

For the middle class, a very unhealthy diet and lifestyle coupled with the diminshing importance of religion, nation and ideology means a lack of purpose.

...

>Everyone who does not agree with me is reddit and therefore their points are invalid

wouldn't thinking big pharma is the culprit and you can solve it by a conversation with your (voodoo)priest be a popular liberal reddit stance?

You know what's real quackin' crazy? Just a couple hundred years ago, "female hysteria" and fainting spells were a very common medical problem. Then all of the sudden, the disease just went away, almost as if it was a social creation and not a physiological one.

Vaccines OP, vaccines is the answer. It didn't do anything good for us (Malaria, Smallpox and Tuberculosis was already going away) and gave us a lot problems. Humans have been around for far longer than any vaccine has been and a healthy body can handle anything nature throws at it.

Too bad about all those unhealthy Native Americans getting btfo by European disease, maybe if they just drank more milk and got strong bones it would have been like a common cold :^)

It seems more likely to me that modernity is responsible for an increase in depression as a whole rather than rates remaining absolutely unchanged across time and culture.

why do you think a people of nomads and foragers could ever keep the populations historians want us to in? it never struck you they lied about it like they lied about vaccines saving us from measles?

Probably we have actual free time now. I'm surely happier when I don't have time to sit still.

t. Someone who's never been depressed

I think none of us actually know anything and we are just picking the version that supports our ideological or religious stance. Notice the complete absence of sources.

Sources would do the same thing we do -infer and synthesize. Care to contribute or you just passing by to talk shit?

Self diagnosis.
Its a plague, so many people (at least from my experience) get sad or deppressed and then go on to say that they have the medical condition of deppression and share rick and morty memes on facebook aswell as stock images of a guy considering hanging himself with the caption "me irl".
Because some genius decided to name anxiety and deppression the disorders straight after their main emotions everyone who even remotly feels or relates to that emotion can immideatly say they have it.
Oh and we should talk about it more, thats being fucking pushed except hold on a minute no fucker who has mental illness really wants to talk about it openly outside a close friend group so the fakers previously mentioned do all the talking for them and completely dilute the weight and meaning of the word until theyre plan backfired and instead of talking making it more accepted it becomes more hated because people think the massive strawman theyve created is the real deal and despise it.
This fucking triggers me I hate the people who do this so much.

t. someone so damaged by drugs and pharma propaganda that he believes basic human emotions nearly everyone experiences are a curse that he must suffer from for the rest of his life

That's ALL deaths, tard.

How would we tell whenever or not depressions are more common now than they used to be? What do you do too quantify psychological problems?

Increased suicide rates? More people seeking anti-depressive medication? More people withdrawing from society? Lower rates of people reporting satisfaction with their lives? Obviously not all of these metrics go back even a century, but there seems to be a noticeable trend even in the last 50 years of increased rates of depression that can't all be attributed to simply increased diagnosis.

Durkheim's work on Suicide back on 1897, albeit far from perfect and in many ways outdated, noted that the most typical profile for a suicide was a young, unmarried man living in a city. If city-dwelling and modernity have a negative effect on the human psyche, increased rates of urbanization in the last decades have had to increased both the gross amount and percentages of depression.

And it's illegal to consume alcohol on public.

>I've never had fun in my life

You obviously don't get out at all or live in the middle of fucking nowhere. I see the same people at whatever local pub I happen to be stopping at every time I go.

perhaps you are saying something like where they were depressed but the people back then didn't count it.

if you are thinking "people were never depressed until doctors talked about it" then you are retarded and so are those who agree.

Nice refutation fag, any more danck jaypegg maymays?

Comfort. Same reason why so many nobles were sadsacks.

This.

Sheer number of drunks drowned the depression diagnosis.

The pubs of today really can't be compared to the pubs of yesteryear.