system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
Am I the only one who finds the obsession with promoting therapy and antidepressants weird?

I mean, I get that some people might need it and may be able to afford it, but for the vast majority of people with depression/anxiety, lifestyle improvements (exercise, sleep, productive habits, eating better, sunlight, social relationships) will probably bring much more bang for their buck.

Also suspicious of people who want to "normalize" things. Reduces the incentive for people to improve themselves.
gpt
This is a subject that is truly impossible to explain to people well, because "exercise, sleep, etc" and is really too specific and too limited.

I fully believe that most of what we call depression or anxiety today, is just a state of mental stress and despair, caused by living in ways that make our monkey brains miserable. 

Presumably like any organ, the brain can be chemically disordered, but not at the rate anxiety and depression occur today. Imagine if 1/4 of people were born with defective kidneys. No other organ has the "fail rate" that we're expected to believe the brain has. This, in my opinion, is evidence that how we live is driving anxiety and depression, that it is not natural.

However, our lives are so unique and complex that answers like exercise or diet don't cover it.

Someone could eat right, exercise, be in the sun, sleep 8 hours, have great friends, and still feel depression and anxiety related to some part of modern living that is so ingrained they'll never discover what it is in their lifetime. Maybe all along it was... idk... the pressure society places on people to obey the clock and a regimented sense of time.

I don't think medication is the right answer, but I *do* think it's almost impossible to get people to see eye-to-eye on this because there are simply *so many* ingrained and obscure ways that our lives differ from how we evolved to live.