In Britain, the Health and Safety Executive reported in 2018 that close to 15 million work days were lost as a result of workplace-related stress, depression, and anxiety, and that among a total workforce of 26.5 million, nearly 600,000 individuals self-reported suffering from work-related mental health issues that year.

It is understandable that socioeconomic ills or bereavement are unlikely to be ameliorated by a chemical agent, whereas the more severe form of depression - which seems more probably to have a biological basis - should be more likely to respond.

In the aforementioned South African study, for example, it is reported that perceived chronic radical discrimination acts independantly of other demographic variables - including several socioeconomic indicators - to negatively affect mental health. Around the world, young girls and women are particularly vulnerable to acts of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, along with all of the traumatogenic outcomes. Longitudinal studies since the 1930s have documented the impact of unemployment on physical and mental health. But when these forms of social suffering intersect in people’s lives - as in the case of impoverished black women, for instance - the adverse effects are compounded.

James Hillman has observed that depression may be a special problem in a society hell-bent on happiness. But let’s examine this connection more closely. It is possible to imagine that the situations life offers may not be happy ones and yet may be the most desirable of all.

TEN: How Do You Serve a Friend Who Is in Despair?

“Perhaps the most useful thing I did was send him a video. My friend Mike Gerson, the Washington Post columnist, had been hospitalized with depression in early 2019. He delivered a beautiful sermon at the National Cathedral about his experience before he died of complications from cancer in November 2022. Depression, he said, was a “malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality.