Depression from Existential Dread

There’s been a recent trend on Twitter and Reddit to attribute mental illness trends to “how fucked” the world is. The claim: depression and anxiety are increasing because of the state of the world — global warming, Trump, shootings, other terrible things. Millennial are depressed, at least in part, because of how the earth is screwed beyond repair.

The first question: is it true that the state of the world, and global geopolitics, have this effect on mental illness?

Of course, one’s situation affects their mental illness (see: me staying at home for the summer). But there’s a difference between “what situation you are living in” and “what the global scientific community has concluded will happen to global temperatures in the near future.” A situation seems to only have a negative effect on someone’s mental health if they felt they were affected by the situation; if no one talked about global warming destroying the world, it’s unlikely anyone would be depressed about it. So, if these so-far-out-of-immediate-expirence events really do have an effect on societies mental well being, it’s because people feel these events will dramatically impact them in the future.

The second question: let’s take as a matter of fact that the state of the world is causing mental illness — what does this mean about the narratives we tell about the state of the world?

Let’s consider two sets of people: a group of depressed climate change activities, and the same but not depressed. Who would you rather fighting for the future of the world? I don’t in any way mean to put down people with mental illness — but it certainly takes energy to deal with. Energy that might be better spent fighting the exact cause of the depression in the first place.

I think it’s really important that our narratives about the “fuckedness” of the world come with an explicit element of hope. Global warming is going to kill us all unless we change our society to full renewable use. Trump is going to hurt the marginalized unless we are allies to the best of our abilities, and get out and vote. Etc. It seems like a much better narrative for positive change rather than just the hopelessness of “we’re fucked.”