Here are some facts:
- Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States. 40 million Americans over the age of 18 are affected by anxiety — roughly 18 percent of the nation's population.
- Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15 to 44.3. MDD affects more than 16.1 million American adults, or about 6.7% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.
- Persistent depressive disorder (PDD, formerly called dysthymia) is a form of depression that usually continues for at least two years. It affects approximately 1.5 percent of the U.S.
population age 18 and older in a given year. (about 3.3 million American adults), and only 62% of adults with MDD are receiving treatment.
- Three decades ago, the average age for the first onset of depression was 30. Today it is 14. Researchers such as Stephen Izard at Duke University point out that the rate of depression in Western industrialized societies is doubling with each
successive generational cohort. At this pace, over 50 per cent of our younger generation, aged 18-29, will succumb to it by middle age. (source)
Depression is a serious problem all around the world
Not long ago, the Yale Global Health review ran an article talking about the growing problem of depression in developing nations. Part of the problem is the lack of services available to help people with psychological problems:
"What if there was one psychiatrist per one million people, three million people, or ten million people, as is the case in Uganda, Zambia, and Indonesia respectively? This is a reality in multiple developing nations, where less than ten percent of afflicted people receive treatment for depression. The need for therapeutic treatment is overwhelming: worldwide, over 350 million people are estimated to suffer from depression. In a study conducted
in rural India, 430 people out of every thousand at-risk individuals were depressed – almost half. In another study in rural regions of India, 39.6 percent of the entire population suffered from mild to moderate depression. Untreated depression is indeed a global crisis."
Why is everybody so
depressed?
It's not hard to understand where depression comes from for those living in the developing world. The traumas of war, violence, poverty, and hunger come readily to mind. But it's important to note that many people struggle with depression -- here in the West and elsewhere in the world -- who aren't dealing with those tragic and challenging conditions.
The roots of depression and anxiety are multi-faceted and complex. It's a fruitful field for research, and every year, books and articles by the thousand are published on this subject. For years in my work as a pastor and then teacher and counselor in the recovery field, I focused much of my energy and attention on dealing with childhood trauma
(abuse and deprivation), and dysfunctional family systems. Focusing on these issues was -- and continues to be -- extremely helpful for many people.
I don't want to discount this emphasis at all. But in the past few years I've started paying more attention to the destructive force of our culture and society.
In other words, people are anxious and depressed not only because they come from a dysfunctional family ... it's because they are living in a dysfunctional society.
How is our society dysfunctional and making people sick?
To answer this, I'd like to turn to John Schumaker. Every now and then a book or article
articulates what I've been vaguely thinking about so clearly and compellingly that I want everybody around me to read it. This is the case with John Schumaker's article in "The New Internationalist" called "The Demoralized Mind." I'm going to quote excerpts of the article at
some length, but you might want to read the whole thing.
Schumaker is an academic (psychology), and doesn't appear to be writing from a spiritual or religious perspective. But what he exposes are most certainly spiritual issues; issues that get to the heart of how
we live, and why we struggle.
As the title of the article suggests, Schumaker points out that our current consumer culture creates demoralization, which is related to depression and anxiety in various, complex ways. Granted, he doesn't talk much about anxiety in the article, but much of what is true about depression and
demoralization is also true of anxiety. He also argues that demoralization is different than depression, and that confusing them creates problems (eg. depression is treatable with drugs, demoralization isn't). I'm not sure I'm convinced about that: they seem to overlap an awful lot. I'll leave that debate to the professionals ... don't let it distract from the value and importance of what he's saying.
Here's how he describes demoralization:
"Demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive
map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfillment. The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction. Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate
since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life."
And here we get into the specifics about what in our culture is sick, and how it messes people up:
"As it is absorbed, consumer culture imposes numerous influences that weaken personality structures, undermine coping and lay the groundwork for eventual demoralization. Its driving features – individualism, materialism, hyper-competition, greed, over-complication, overwork, hurriedness and debt – all correlate negatively with psychological health and/or social well-being. The level of intimacy,
trust and true friendship in people’s lives has plummeted. Sources of wisdom, social and community support, spiritual comfort, intellectual growth and life education have dried up. Passivity and choice have displaced creativity and mastery. ...
"By their design, the
central organizing principles and practices of consumer culture perpetuate an ‘existential vacuum’ that is a precursor to demoralization. This inner void is often experienced as chronic and inescapable boredom, which is not surprising. Despite surface appearances to the contrary, the consumer age is deathly boring. Boredom is caused, not because an activity is inherently boring, but because it is not meaningful to the person. Since the life of the consumer revolves around the
overkill of meaningless manufactured low-level material desires, it is quickly engulfed by boredom, as well as jadedness, ennui and discontent. This steadily graduates to ‘existential boredom’ wherein the person finds all of life uninteresting and unrewarding.
"Consumption itself is a flawed motivational platform for a society. Repeated consummation of desire, without moderating constraints, only serves to habituate people and diminish the future satisfaction potential of what is consumed. This develops gradually into ‘consumer anhedonia’, wherein consumption loses reward capacity and offers no more than distraction and ritualistic value. Consumerism and psychic deadness are inexorable
bedfellows."
Schumaker is particularly aware of the destructive role of marketing propaganda, which raises our expectations of satisfaction, only to disappoint us again and again:
"Human culture has mutated into a sociopathic marketing machine dominated by economic priorities and psychological manipulation. Never before has a cultural system inculcated its followers to suppress so much of their humanity. Leading this hostile takeover of the collective psyche are increasingly sophisticated propaganda and misinformation industries that traffic the illusion of consumer happiness by wildly
amplifying our expectations of the material world. Today’s consumers are by far the most propagandized people in history. The relentless and repetitive effect is highly hypnotic, diminishing critical faculties, reducing one’s sense of self, and transforming commercial unreality into a surrogate for meaning and purpose.
"The more lost, disoriented and spiritually defeated people become, the more susceptible they become to persuasion, and the more they end up buying into the oversold expectations of consumption. But in unreality culture, hyper-inflated expectations continually collide with the reality of experience. Since nothing lives up to the hype, the world of the consumer is actually an ongoing exercise in
disappointment. While most disappointments are minor and easy to dissociate, they accumulate into an emotional background of frustration as deeper human needs get neglected. Continued starvation of these needs fuels disillusion about one’s whole approach to life."
These factors are particularly destructive for
Millenials, and may help explain why so many are struggling:
"For the younger generation, the course of boredom, disappointment, disillusion and demoralization is almost inevitable. As the products of invisible parents, commercialized education, cradle-to-grave marketing and a profoundly
boring and insane cultural program, they must also assimilate into consumer culture while knowing from the outset that its workings are destroying the planet and jeopardizing their future. Understandably, they have become the trance generation, with an insatiable appetite for any technology that can downsize awareness and blunt the emotions. With society in existential crisis, and emotional life on a steep downward trajectory, trance is today’s fastest-growing consumer
market."
So what needs to happen? What needs to change? Schumaker says that our society needs to change in fundamental ways, but he's not very optimistic:
"The real task is somehow to treat a sick culture rather than its sick individuals. Erich Fromm sums up this challenge: ‘We can’t make people sane by making them adjust to this society. We need a society that is adjusted to the needs of people.’ Fromm’s solution included a Supreme Cultural Council that would serve as a cultural overseer and advise governments on corrective and preventive action. But that sort of solution is
still a long way off, as is a science of culture change. Democracy in its present guise is a guardian of cultural insanity.
"We are long overdue a cultural revolution that would force a radical revamp of the political process, economics, work, family and
environmental policy. It is true that a society of demoralized people is unlikely to revolt even though it sits on a massive powder keg of pent-up frustration. But credibility counteracts demoralization, and this frustration can be released with immense energy when a credible cause, or credible leadership, is added to the equation.
"It might seem that credibility, meaning and purposeful action would derive from the multiple threats to our safety and survival posed by the fatal mismatch between consumer culture and the needs of the planet. The fact that it has not highlights the degree of demoralization that infects the consumer age."
These last two paragraphs reveal the tension that exists in our society: people are frustrated with the way things are, and desperately want change, but their work keeps them too busy and stressed, and their leisure time is too fragmented by the distractions of passive entertainment and consumption. Of course I'm over-generalizing when I say this, and there are many blessed exceptions to the rule ... which leads to the final thing I want to
say:
Where do we go from here?
I agree with Schumaker on both of the final points: (a) what is most needed is a radical cultural revolution that will revamp our political, economic, family, and environmental structures. I would add that to me, these all fall under the category of spiritual issues,
and change would happen if and when there would be a spiritual revolution (b) This kind of revolution is not likely to happen soon. Therefore, we need to find ways of transforming our own way of relating to our society. In other words, we need something that will enable us to live more counter-culturally.
Reading this article, and thinking
about the issues it raises, makes me even more committed to my role as the leader of a spiritual community. I think this is what we need, and we need the help and support of a spiritual community in three specific ways:
1. We need to be part of a spiritual community that helps counter-balance the individualism and isolation of
our consumer society. Here it's important to emphasize that I use the term "spiritual community" deliberately ... not "church." A church can be a spiritual community for people, but too often it isn't. Too often "church" is just a place people go to get spiritual teaching and experience, and the "relational" or "community" part is minimal, or virtually non-existent.
In other words, church functions as the spiritual component of the consumer society. For too many, church is a place where you get your spiritual goods and services ... rather than being a community of people that you know, interact with regularly at a deep level, and get real support
from. It's like going to a movie or a concert ... you're there for what you get from the stage; the people sitting next to you are irrelevant, or maybe even a distraction.
In contrast, we need a spiritual community. We need a place where people know
us, care about us, and have relationships that are safe and real enough to support us in personal challenges.
2. We need to be part of a spiritual community that challenges the status quo of our culture. We need regular reminders about the emptiness of the consumer life, and the futility of pursuing happiness
and meaning in the ways our society tells us to. We need people who will teach us how to engage in, and support us in the process of, spiritual self-development.
In this way, the church can be a great partner to medical and psychological professionals. There is an obvious and important neuro-biological component to
psychological disorders, and there is also an important place for talk therapy of various types that will help people deal with trauma and dysfunctional family systems. But there is also an important role for spiritual teachers to help people come to terms with the destructive role our culture has in our lives. We need people who will help and support us in finding ways to live counter-culturally.
3. We need to be part of some kind of work or service that gives meaning and purpose to our lives. I was struck by Schumaker's repeated insistence in the article that life in our consumer society leads to boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. Every one of us needs a way to connect to meaning and purpose, and these are fundamentally spiritual issues. As philosophers and spiritual teachers have said for millenia, meaning
and purpose flow from a combination of union/relationship with the Absolute, and participation in some kind of service to others ... something that lifts other people up.
Without these two things in place (meaning through union, and purpose through
service) we will be lost. And we will be ever more vulnerable to the twin-headed monster of depression and anxiety that damages so many.
