One of the Best Defenses Against Depression That Never Gets Mentioned
November 13, 2025
Since you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet that either you’ve struggled with significant depression or you love someone who has. The new millennium has seen a surge in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation across the West. Between 2015 and 2023 in the United States, the proportion of adults diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives went up by almost 10 percentage points to 29 percent. In the same period, the proportion of people who have been or are currently being treated for depression went up by 7 points to 17.8 percent.1 We’ve removed much of the shame and stigma once associated with mental health struggles. But we haven’t succeeded in reducing the struggles. Instead, they’ve spread like an oil spill, entrapping more and more of us like seagulls with our wings weighed down.
As a young friend of mine experienced, this mental health disaster has hit women hardest. We see ourselves as living in the most pro-woman culture in all human history. Yet women in our culture are increasingly unhappy. Thirty-seven percent of women now report being diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives, compared with 20 percent of men.2 The mental health crisis has also been particularly hard on younger people. In 2023, 27.3 percent of girls and 9.4 percent of boys ages twelve to seventeen reported experiencing a major depressive episode in the past year, more than double the rates in 2004.3 Likewise, between 2009 and 2021, the share of American high school students who said they had “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent.4 Tragically, between 2007 and 2021, the suicide rate among ten-to-twenty-four-year-olds also increased by 62 percent.5
