Depression and anxiety may as well be the cough and fever of the mental health world. We can certainly treat cough and fever symptoms but that is quite differen

Depression and anxiety may as well be the cough and fever of the mental health world. We can certainly treat cough and fever symptoms but that is quite different from treating the underlying condition. I think the big problem is we probably have a lot of recent societal/cultural changes which at least contribute to depression and anxiety, but are very hard to detect because of near universal adoption + too many confounding variables when examining holdout populations. Thinking of things like diet (and trace chemicals, pesticides), sleep habits, screen usage (internet, social media, porn, passive media, games), caffeine, etc. Somewhere in those areas, IMO, likely lie very large causal contributors to all of the reportedly increasing mental health problems we are seeing. I can also speak from personal experience that I had very debilitating depression/anxiety as an adolescent which has since greatly leveled off but not quite cleared. While I could likely still be diagnosed with depression now, to me the two states comparing now vs then are so wildly, qualitatively different that I am convinced they represent different underlying pathologies. What I have now feels more like the same thing that most other malcontents seem to have.