A survey by the U.S. Census Bureau reported a staggering 31% upswing in anxiety and depression during the pandemic’s second year, while another found a threefold increase in depression symptoms during that period, which means it’s not just you: languishing spiked in an enormous way these past few years and likely hasn’t decreased much.
And I sense that none of us really need to ask why this is. Depression is such an overdetermined phenomenon in our time that it’s impossible to assign blame to any one contributing factor, but the isolation, disruption, and pervasive climate of fear over the past three years are undeniable contributors. Exhausted, dismayed, and afraid of conspiracy theorists, shootings, communicable diseases, and wars both actual and possible: to be alive in the United States has been to live and work in a miasma of moral terror without much of a breathing apparatus to filter out the carcinogens and contaminants.
The appreciation of horror seems, at least in…
