Are Depression and Anxiety the Latest Canary in a Coal Mine?

A recent article in the New York Times argued that by talking too much about mental illness we are pathologizing normal emotional responses. But is that true? Normal is a relative term. It means average or typical, but that can be difficult to capture. Normal for your age, typical in your culture, average for people of your background or experience? Whether we like it or not, more people are experiencing anxiety and depression, so, arguably, that is becoming the norm.

There are any number of potential explanations. We live in a world our ancestors literally couldn’t have imagined. Our food is processed, our homes are climate-controlled, we don’t exercise or sleep enough, and we are inundated by 24-hour-a-day sensational, negative news. We spend much of our time watching other people on TV or online, all of whom seem to be more attractive, successful, and happy than we are, although that is largely an illusion created for our entertainment. The bottom line is that we are asking our brains and bodies to cope with a different set of stressors than they evolved to cope with, and it is taking a toll on us.

This is not to say that life wasn’t difficult in the past. Finding food, coping with the weather, and staying alive took most of people’s attention and energy. When life is hard, and people suffer and die young, resignation or stoicism is a coping skill. But, not talking about your problems doesn’t mean they go away, or that people aren’t suffering quietly. In the modern world, we have more time to think about how we want to spend our lives. That doesn’t mean we will always get what we want, and we still have to learn to cope with adversity, disappointment, and distress, but our relatively comfortable lives afford us the opportunity to make more choices than people in the past. So perhaps the problem is not that we are talking about mental health, but what we are saying about it.

Much of modern discourse is negative, cynical, and bipartisan. But is this really something new? Politics have always been messy, people have always been greedy, and life has always been fragile. But in the past, people weren’t inundated by constant well-edited images and discussions of how bad things were everywhere, all the time. When something bad happened to them, they had the opportunity to take action, which serves as an antidote to feelings of helplessness and distress. In today’s world, the 24/7 array of sensational, negative news stories catches our attention but gives us a disproportionately grim view of the world and contributes to a sense that things have never been worse. Ironically, when a disaster does happen, people often step up to the challenge. It is thinking about things we can’t influence that makes us feel hopeless, depressed, and anxious.

So where does this leave us? We live in more comfort than at any time in history, but many of us are so anxious or depressed that it is impeding our ability to function or enjoy our lives. Naming the issue isn’t the problem. It is what we do with that information that matters. When we wallow in doom-scrolling or talk endlessly about how badly our politicians are behaving without voting or getting involved in our local political scene, we perpetuate our feeling that things are terrible and getting worse. Essentially, it is incumbent on all of us, but especially those of us who are older, to resist the message that life has never been worse, or the future more grim. Is this really the most politically divided the United States has ever been? We did have a civil war. Is climate change really going to destroy the planet? So far we have evaded any number of planet-killing events including plagues, ice ages, two world wars, asteroids, and the threat of nuclear war. While it is easier to identify problems and blame others than to find and implement solutions, that is exactly what we need to do to increase our own sense of well-being and to give others a sense of hope.

Yet hope alone can’t fix anxiety and depression. The fact that these conditions are becoming more prevalent means we need to talk more about how to combat them, not to be afraid to address the topic. But naming something doesn’t fix it. Once we have identified the problem, we need to focus on how to mitigate its effects. The solution is not to talk less about mental illness, it is to talk more about what people can do to overcome it.

There are effective medications for depression and anxiety, and a variety of talk therapies that work. With telehealth, it is easier than ever to see a therapist, and there are hundreds of self-help modules, books, and videos available as well. But treating individuals is only part of the solution. Essentially the rising rates of depression and anxiety seen among young people should be viewed as warning, much like the canary in the coal mine. They are telling us that there are aspects of modern life that are so stressful that distress is becoming more normal. Not talking about the problem won’t make it go away. Instead, we need to look at the social and environmental factors contributing to our rising sense of malaise and have the hard conversations it will take to make changes.