After a lifelong search to understand my patient’s anxiety and depression, as well as my own anxiety, and alcoholism, I have come to understand that population density stress (PDS, my term) is the chief cause of all our “diseases of civilization”. I consider PDS to be composed of a number of elements: (1) Over-activation of our stress response, (2) Crowding, (3) The loss of our clan social structure, (4) Alienation from nature due to urbanization, (4) Environmental collapse and pollution, (5) Constant competition for status in a multitude of ever-changing hierarchies, (6) Loss of spiritual consciousness, (7) Multiple addictions, including to our stress hormones, (8) Adrenal gland failure and death. Psychiatry is clueless in its inability to describe the true nature of anxiety and depression. Psychiatrists have been increasingly limited to their role as prescription writing machines, although we have little understanding of the mechanisms of our “wonder drugs”. Americans take 4,300,000,000 Rx per year! Traditional living hunter-gatherer migratory clans have none of our diseases. Half of the American adult population has high blood pressure, but none of these hunter-gatherers do. Stress hormones and our over-active sympathetic nervous system raise our blood pressure. No wonder we’re literally falling over in a state of nervous exhaustion! By the way, “neurasthenia” or “nervous exhaustion” was first described by two 19th century neurologists. Drs. Beard and Weir Mitchell believed that nervous exhaustion was the result of the hurry-up culture of their time: the telegraph, fast trains, long work hours, magazines and newspapers, education, and urbanization. What would they think of our “advances” in communication, travel, work speed, urbanization, etc.? My book addresses these topics and stress management at length. This website is a great idea! Thank you Arianna!
