For this blog post, I will be discussing how depression and anxiety are diseases of civilization.
In this modern day world, we live with a lot of stress. Our jobs, school, toxic family dynamics, social expectations, and so much more can all bring potentially daily stress-triggering moments. We evolved our stress response as wild animals, not civilized individuals; our stress response is meant to be activated, save us from danger, and end until needed the next time the mammoth you were trying to kill turns tries to stomp on you. With the advent of modern civilization, we began to be exposed to stressors that were drawn out in ways very contrary to how this biological stress-response system wishes to operate.
The result of this? You name it. To my understanding, stress is linked to a myriad of problems: heart disease, IBS, hypertension, and what I will focusing on, depression and anxiety.
Because of our disconnect from our evolutionary past, us moderners are deprived of the kind of exercise that keeps our bodies and brain stimulated, cut off from the diets that built our species, and exposed to exacerbated social pressures (in the workplace, and especially on social media). Miller and Raison (2016) point out a connection between stress-induced inflammation and molecular patterns from the gut microbiome with anxiety and depression. They also mention that depression is a sort of convalescent evolutionary response to fighting pathogens, and whether this is true or not, it certainly is an interesting idea to ponder. In our more sanitary and high-stress modern world, does that mean that depression is a self-defense mechanism of the body against pressures of civilized life? The long-term stress exposure that we experience can disrupt our sleep, damage our brains, and disrupt our immune systems, so potentially that makes depression our body trying to escape from stress and force ourselves to convalesce.
Stephen Ilardi, a doctor of clinical psychology, recommends rewilding your life style as much as possible to try and combat the tension between the modern lifestyle and your brains ability to deal with stress. These include exercising (like walking and hiking), getting healthy sleep, sunlight, and social connection.
I think by now because of self-wellness trends and such, we all know quite a bit of this information. However, I think this delve into depression from an evolutionary perspective rather than from a purely chance disease one is very helpful in thinking about how to reflect upon the way that the way we think we're "supposed" to live nowadays may hinder our wellbeing.
Resources:
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/depression-is-a-disease-of-civilization-huntergatherers-hold-the-key-to-the-cure-return-to-now/
https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/456/anxiety-a-modern-phenomenon
https://www.nature.com/articles/nri.2015.5
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