I am quite confident that mental disorders are not just more diagnosed, but also more common than they used to be. I don't know what all the causes are, but I s

I am quite confident that mental disorders are not just more diagnosed, but also more common than they used to be. I don't know what all the causes are, but I suspect that it is somewhat akin to the "obesity epidemic" and that it has many factors of debatable relevance. There are social and environmental factors that are causing profound differences in disease rates; there's no reason to suspect that mental diseases are any different. For my money, I would say that increase rates (real rates, not diagnosed rates) of mental disorders have gone up considerably due to, in no particular order: * dietary changes * environmental toxins * less time spent outdoors (in bright sunlight) * more sedentary lifestyles * more low-level, long-term stress * broader, shallower social circles (more severely exceeding Dunbar's number) * changes in social norms (less physical contact, more space and time spent alone) Some of the above probably have no effect, and there are probably important factors I didn't mention. But I think that as a population, we are more ill than we were generations back---not just more over-diagnosed or more often diagnosed.