symah 's review for:

Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari

4.0

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I adored this book. I have worked my entire career in community and much of it doing social prescribing-esque and advocacy work. I've seen first-hand the impacts that things like community organizing, feeling connected to neighbours, not feeling alone, and cooking/growing food together can have on a person's mental health. I also know from first-hand/personal experience what an impact re-connection has had on my life. This book validated so much of what I have felt intuitively in my work, and lays it out in a way that is well researched (with lots of citations!) and told in a beautiful set of stories, both personal and not. I appreciated the way Hari wove his personal story through the entire book, and how he integrated the stories of others in powerful ways. I cried as I read the story of community organizing in Berlin. So powerful to see these anecdotes of success and of different ways of being in the world that lead to mental wellness.

I think this book does a fantastic job of reminding people that depression has a deeply social component to it. I think perhaps being clear about that in the title could support a person's experience of reading the book better. There are plenty of non-social reasons beyond chemical imbalance that create the conditions for depression - systemic inflammation, poor vagal tone, diet, etc. We're complex systems - biopsychosocial ones, as he mentions in the book, and I would have loved to read a chapter about more of the bio-elements.