Something strange happened as the world got richer. Depression and anxiety rates began climbing in the 1980s and haven't stopped since. Today, one in five adults in developed countries experiences a mental health disorder in any given year. We live longer, healthier, safer lives than any previous generation—yet we're more anxious, more depressed, and more medicated than ever before.

This isn't just bad luck or better diagnosis. It's the predictable result of how we've reorganized society over the past fifty years. The same forces that brought us unprecedented prosperity—globalization, technology, economic deregulation—also dismantled the social structures that once kept us psychologically grounded. Understanding this history helps explain why individual solutions keep failing a collective problem.

Humans evolved in tight-knit groups of 50-150 people where everyone knew everyone. For most of history, isolation meant death—exile was a punishment second only to execution. Our brains are wired for constant social contact, for knowing our place in a community, for faces we recognize and people who depend on us.

Starting in the 1950s, developed societies began a grand experiment in independence. Suburbs spread people across landscapes built for cars, not conversations. Television replaced front-porch socializing. Dual-income households left neighborhoods empty during working hours. Church attendance, union membership, and civic participation all began declining. By 2020, Americans reported having half as many close friends as they did in 1990.

Then came smartphones and social media, promising connection while delivering its simulation. We now spend hours daily consuming curated highlights of others' lives while sitting alone. The brain registers these digital interactions as almost-but-not-quite real social contact—enough to reduce the hunger for genuine connection, not enough to satisfy it. Loneliness now carries health risks equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes daily, yet we've built societies where it's almost impossible to avoid.

Takeaway

Digital tools satisfy just enough of our social instincts to reduce our drive for real connection, while providing none of the psychological benefits that actual community delivers.

In the postwar decades, most workers in developed countries could expect stable employment, predictable advancement, and a pension at the end. This wasn't utopia—discrimination was rampant, opportunities limited—but economic anxiety wasn't the default psychological state. The future, for many, felt knowable.

The economic restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s traded that security for flexibility and growth. Jobs became temporary, careers became 'portfolios,' and retirement became an individual responsibility. Social media then added a devastating twist: constant comparison. Previous generations mostly compared themselves to neighbors and coworkers. Now we compare ourselves to the entire world's highlight reel, updated in real-time, available the moment we wake up.

This combination—actual economic precarity plus the perception that everyone else is thriving—creates what researchers call 'ambient anxiety.' It's not triggered by specific threats but hums constantly in the background. Your brain evolved to relax once the predator passed. Now the predator is everywhere and nowhere, and your stress response never fully switches off. Remarkably, this anxiety affects people across income levels. Being wealthy in an anxious society doesn't provide much protection when the comparison pool is infinite.

Takeaway

Modern anxiety often stems not from actual danger but from systems that make the future feel unknowable while constantly reminding us how well others seem to be doing.

The 1987 introduction of Prozac marked a turning point in how developed societies understood unhappiness. Depression, once viewed as a response to difficult circumstances or unresolved psychological conflicts, became a chemical imbalance—a medical problem requiring medical solutions. This wasn't entirely wrong, but it was dangerously incomplete.

What followed was explosive growth in psychiatric medication. Antidepressant prescriptions increased 400% in the United States between 1988 and 2008. Similar patterns emerged across the developed world. These medications genuinely help many people. But they also became the default response to problems that aren't purely chemical: loneliness, meaningless work, community collapse, economic insecurity.

The appeal of pharmaceutical solutions is obvious—they're faster, cheaper, and more scalable than fixing broken social structures. Treating an individual's symptoms costs less than rebuilding neighborhoods, reforming labor markets, or creating genuine economic security. But treating individuals for collective problems has diminishing returns. We've been increasing medication rates for forty years while mental health outcomes continue worsening. The patient might need medicine, but the patient also needs their community back.

Takeaway

When we treat social problems as individual medical conditions, we can help some people cope better while the underlying causes continue making more people sick.

The mental health crisis isn't a mystery—it's the predictable cost of choices we've made as societies. We prioritized economic growth and individual freedom while dismantling the social structures that kept people psychologically grounded. The result is a population that's richer, freer, and lonelier than ever before.

Understanding this history matters because it points toward different solutions. Individual therapy and medication have their place, but they can't substitute for community, stability, and genuine human connection. The question isn't just how do we treat more people but why are so many people getting sick in the first place.