This is a book review of Lost Connections authored by Johann Hari, a British journalist. His book was obviously inspired by his own experience growing up with depression and being treated by the medical and pharmacological establishments who viewed depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain. This view supported the belief that the favored treatment was to ingest chemicals to restore balance. Hari's journey ended up challenging this belief. This parallels my own journey to unlearn so much of what I was taught growing in a capitalist society to where I am now with this blog challenging such an organization of society as the root cause of so many of the evils we experience everyday of our lives.
The reviewer writes:
It has been proved that depression is, to a significant degree, not a problem of the brain, but of life in general. In that sense, depression is not a mystical and irrational illness. It is a very rational and understandable response to the adverse conditions of capitalist society.Hari finds the second cause to be "disconnection" from society. This flies in the face of capitalist ideology as interpreted by Margaret Thatcher who said "there is no such thing as society". Once again the extreme individualism of capitalist societies create many conditions that end up causing disconnection or isolation from society which often leads to depression.
.... To his credit the author names disconnection from meaningful work as cause number one.
