Thursday, October 18, 2007

We should all be 30-something Atlanta yuppies Here's a Dr. Helen post about this article on depression and Modern Life™. It kinda lost me from the get-go:
"There's increasing evidence that we were never designed for our sedentary, socially isolated, indoor, sleep-deprived, poorly nourished lifestyle," says the bearded, wiry Ilardi, so worked up about the topic that he leaves his chicken and pasta untouched at a downtown Lawrence restaurant. "If throughout the course of human evolution people were as vulnerable to depressive illness as 21st - century Americans, we would long since have gone extinct as a species."


The article itself doesn't seem so bad, but it tends to misplace the whole 'original leisure society' bit. Of course, it rests on the assumption that one can even know what sort of clinical depression was faced by Aurignacians, or even recent hunter-gatherer groups. And, forgive me, but I'll take a 73-year life expectancy over 30 and possibly less depression, thankyouverymuch.