In Australia, about 1 million people experience depression every year. Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.If you or someone you know needs help, call: Hari is not alone, neither in his depression nor his embrace of a chemical cure.ĭepression is a condition that only last century afflicted a tiny fraction of the population, but by 2017 the World Health Organisation had declared the leading cause of ill health worldwide. His quest for answers to these questions drove him to research and write a book examining 'the real causes of depression and the unexpected solutions'. One was, 'Why was I still depressed?' The second mystery, the much more important one to me, 'Why are so many people in our culture, becoming so depressed and so anxious?'' 'There were two mysteries hanging over me. He started taking his medication and, for a time, found relief. His depression, the doctor explained, was a brain disease, and a new generation of drugs - Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) - would cure him. He soon found a doctor who told him that his diffuse sense of unhappiness and despair was the product of depleted serotonin levels. It was the late 1990s, the 'Age of Prozac', and depression and its chemical cure were everywhere.Īfter sobbing on the Matterhorn and breaking down in Kafka's house, Hari had a realisation. It was only after the British author and journalist finished school, and left his home in the United Kingdom to travel the world, that he began to suspect the abiding unhappiness that had periodically overwhelmed him all his life was not in fact normal.

'The tablet was white and small, and as I swallowed, it felt like a chemical kiss,' he said. Johann Hari was 18 when he swallowed his first antidepressant.

Johann hari depression