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human
Is depression/anxiety a symptom of modern civilization?

Hi all,

I am wondering if there are any philosophical writings on this topic. I have a "feeling" that much of the depression and anxiety that exists in contemporary societies is a result of the necessities of modern life, but I am not familiar with any theoretical works that support my suspicions. 

I often think about how it is almost "normal" to be depressed/anxious. Considering that we (in modern urban/suburban environments) live lives that are very isolated from one another, disconnected from nature, and disconnected from a larger community/sense of purpose, depression and anxiety seem to be justified responses to this. Even people who are materially well-off (and "shouldn't" have anything to be depressed about) often experience poor mental health. Is it possible that we who experience depression/anxiety are not "ill", but that we are merely reacting "normally" to a society that requires us to live in ways that go against our human nature?

This quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti comes to mind:  "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Anyway, I hope this makes sense, and please let me know if you have any reading recommendations.

Thank you and Happy New Year!
gpt
In short, no.  Depression/Anxiety is not a modern symptom.


Depression is a 'modern' term that has become a blanket term for a multitude of mental health discrepancies that historically went under a different name, with the most relevant one being melancholia.  Melancholia, which was often treated as being differing in degrees from simple to agitated to extreme (suicidal and/or hallucinatory) in the late 19th century, is a term that was, before the rise of the term depression, often retrojected into Western literature from before the Enlightenment.  If one accepts the understanding of mental distress, the desire to die and/or kill oneself, and social anxiety as signs of depression, then literary examples can be found in Jewish and Christian scripture and biographical occurences of this sort can be traced back to Augustine, as well as personal letters in the first few centuries of the CE.  The religious references here are not without reason: melancholia and spirituality were grouped in some circles  - melancholia was sometimes understood as a spiritual malady or loss of religious affections (this goes for many religions).  Nevertheless, feelings of loss, grief, mourning, lacking purpose, etc., which lead to strong mental distress and social aversion, are not exclusive to the modern era.


In the modern capitalist turn, this melancholia took on a modification due to the language of alienation being not invented by Marx, but saturating modern exposition and reflection.  It's hard to not trace back depression felt in capitalist societies to some sort of form of Marxist understanding of alienation.  This understanding of modernized alienation came alongside psychological strides in terms of both psychoanalytic, scientific, and philosphical discourse surrounding mental health.  Melancholia as a spiritual malady was waning and now the chemical and psychological understanding of the body became the grounds for further reflection.  With modern discourse in self-reflection having more mental health awareness, it is easy to see the link between modern conditions affecting/causing a modern variation of melancholia (depression), but, generally speaking, those who came before us had their fair share of mental health issues, they just did not discuss it in our modern terms due to their differing understandings.



For reference:  
From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression by Clark Lawlor (2012) 

Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times bt Stanley Jackson (1990)

Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia by Julia Kristeva (1989)