Professor Martin Seligman, one of America’s top psychologists and an authority on depression, says that rich countries are facing an epidemic of depression. He says it’s clearly not ecological because the Amish people who live just outside his hometown drink the same water, breathe the same air and eat the same food as everyone else, but have one tenth the rate of depression. And it’s certainly not being poor, because depression is a disease of the affluent. Seligman places some of the blame on the rise of individualism and says ‘a life spent pursuing short cuts to happiness allows our strengths and virtues to wither, rather than develop, and sets us up for depression.’
It almost sounds like what Jesus said: ‘What profit is there if you gain the whole world and lose your soul.’