MODERN MADNESS: OUR MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS AS A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
In the modern digital age we've seen an epidemic spike in mental health disorders--especially amongst young adults and teens. Skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, the opioid epidemic, a doubling of suicide rates, increased ADHD and overall malaise.
What's happening that's driving this mental health crisis?
Indeed, according to Dr. Steven Ilardi, the University of Kansas psychologist, researcher and author of The Depression Cure (Da Capo, 2009) “Americans are 10 times more likely to have depressive illness than they were 60 years ago…and a recent study found the rate of depression has more than doubled in just the past decade”.
Globally, things aren’t much better; according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 450 million people worldwide are directly affected by mental disorders and disabilities and that by 2030 depression will top the list of all other health conditions as the number one financial burden around the world.
Why? Why are we getting more stressed out, more depressed and more addicted?
Dr. Ilardi thinks that he’s found the answer: Increased rates of depression and other mental health woes like anxiety and addiction are a byproduct of our modernized, industrialized and urbanized lives. Our love affair with the gadgets and comforts of being a highly technologically evolved society have put us on a never-ending treadmill of overworking, under-sleeping and hyper-stressing as we exhaustedly lunge towards the “American Dream”.
What happens when we work longer hours in soul-crushing cubicles to buy things that we don’t need? According to Dr. Ilardi: “We’ve been engineering the activity out of our lives. The levels of bright-light exposure-time spent outdoors-have been declining. The average adult gets just over six and a half hours of sleep a night. It used to be nine hours a night. There’s increasing isolation, fragmentation, the erosion of community.”
Thus, according to Ilardi, “We feel perpetually stressed.”
Dr. Ilardi had found that certain societies-such as the American Amish and the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea, had essentially zero rates of depression or other mental health disorders. But how can this be? We are all essentially wired the same way–have the same DNA. And these cultures that were much more mentally healthy than ours certainly didn’t live stress-free lives. Indeed, by many measures, it is a lot more difficult living as a hunter-gatherer in New Guinea or working from-morning-to-dusk as the Pennsylvania Amish do.
So then how and why are they so mentally healthy? Answer: Their lifestyle.
THERAPEUTIC LIFESTYLE CHANGES
The more Dr. Ilardi looked at the commonalities of these mentally healthy societies, the more he was able to tease out certain common variables that he was then able to operationalize in his groundbreaking research dubbed the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) Project. He took clinically depressed subjects and then incorporated several of these therapeutic lifestyle changes into their lives for several weeks.
The results? They experienced phenomenal outcomes: people who had suffered from mental health, anxiety, and depression for many years saw amazing–and measurable–improvements. Indeed, these improvements were statistically significant, not only when compared to control groups, but also when compared to people who had been treated only with depression medications.
And what were these magical lifestyle changes? Getting regular daily exercise; getting plenty of natural sunlight; getting ample sleep every night; eating an Omega-3 rich diet; being involved in some type of social activity where social connections were made; and participation in meaningful tasks that leave little time for negative thoughts or rumination.
Dr. Kardaras has incorporated these “Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes” into the clinical protocols of Maui Recovery in Hawaii, Omega Recovery in Austin, the Launch House in NY and with his private practice clients.
Unplugging from our devices, developing a sense of healing community, physical exercise, immersing oneself in nature–those things alone can be more therapeutic than sitting for an hour in a therapist’s chair and venting about your life.
And there is another key factor: For many, the modern age has also vacuumed out a sense of meaning and purpose out of people's lives. Thus many clients that Dr. Kardaras works with are undergoing an existential crisis of meaning and purpose as well. And in that existential void, a person can turn to toxic habits and behaviors to fill the emptiness. In these cases, existential exploration and finding a sense of life purpose is critical in the healing process.
Thus Dr. Kardaras combines traditional psychotherapy with nature immersion, existential exploration and the above-mentioned Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. And when those elements are all combined together, the results are often nothing less than human alchemy-- a complete psychic transformation.
What's happening that's driving this mental health crisis?
Indeed, according to Dr. Steven Ilardi, the University of Kansas psychologist, researcher and author of The Depression Cure (Da Capo, 2009) “Americans are 10 times more likely to have depressive illness than they were 60 years ago…and a recent study found the rate of depression has more than doubled in just the past decade”.
Globally, things aren’t much better; according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 450 million people worldwide are directly affected by mental disorders and disabilities and that by 2030 depression will top the list of all other health conditions as the number one financial burden around the world.
Why? Why are we getting more stressed out, more depressed and more addicted?
Dr. Ilardi thinks that he’s found the answer: Increased rates of depression and other mental health woes like anxiety and addiction are a byproduct of our modernized, industrialized and urbanized lives. Our love affair with the gadgets and comforts of being a highly technologically evolved society have put us on a never-ending treadmill of overworking, under-sleeping and hyper-stressing as we exhaustedly lunge towards the “American Dream”.
What happens when we work longer hours in soul-crushing cubicles to buy things that we don’t need? According to Dr. Ilardi: “We’ve been engineering the activity out of our lives. The levels of bright-light exposure-time spent outdoors-have been declining. The average adult gets just over six and a half hours of sleep a night. It used to be nine hours a night. There’s increasing isolation, fragmentation, the erosion of community.”
Thus, according to Ilardi, “We feel perpetually stressed.”
Dr. Ilardi had found that certain societies-such as the American Amish and the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea, had essentially zero rates of depression or other mental health disorders. But how can this be? We are all essentially wired the same way–have the same DNA. And these cultures that were much more mentally healthy than ours certainly didn’t live stress-free lives. Indeed, by many measures, it is a lot more difficult living as a hunter-gatherer in New Guinea or working from-morning-to-dusk as the Pennsylvania Amish do.
So then how and why are they so mentally healthy? Answer: Their lifestyle.
THERAPEUTIC LIFESTYLE CHANGES
The more Dr. Ilardi looked at the commonalities of these mentally healthy societies, the more he was able to tease out certain common variables that he was then able to operationalize in his groundbreaking research dubbed the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) Project. He took clinically depressed subjects and then incorporated several of these therapeutic lifestyle changes into their lives for several weeks.
The results? They experienced phenomenal outcomes: people who had suffered from mental health, anxiety, and depression for many years saw amazing–and measurable–improvements. Indeed, these improvements were statistically significant, not only when compared to control groups, but also when compared to people who had been treated only with depression medications.
And what were these magical lifestyle changes? Getting regular daily exercise; getting plenty of natural sunlight; getting ample sleep every night; eating an Omega-3 rich diet; being involved in some type of social activity where social connections were made; and participation in meaningful tasks that leave little time for negative thoughts or rumination.
Dr. Kardaras has incorporated these “Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes” into the clinical protocols of Maui Recovery in Hawaii, Omega Recovery in Austin, the Launch House in NY and with his private practice clients.
Unplugging from our devices, developing a sense of healing community, physical exercise, immersing oneself in nature–those things alone can be more therapeutic than sitting for an hour in a therapist’s chair and venting about your life.
And there is another key factor: For many, the modern age has also vacuumed out a sense of meaning and purpose out of people's lives. Thus many clients that Dr. Kardaras works with are undergoing an existential crisis of meaning and purpose as well. And in that existential void, a person can turn to toxic habits and behaviors to fill the emptiness. In these cases, existential exploration and finding a sense of life purpose is critical in the healing process.
Thus Dr. Kardaras combines traditional psychotherapy with nature immersion, existential exploration and the above-mentioned Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. And when those elements are all combined together, the results are often nothing less than human alchemy-- a complete psychic transformation.