This book is incredible.

It will help you make so much sense of everything you think and feel. Everything is backed up by studies, with explanations on why you think and feel the way you do.

We’re not irreparably broken, we’re a product of our circumstances. We can rewire our brains.

Everyone should read this book. I read it because it sounded interesting, but it has helped me so much.

Absolutely worth a read, whether you’re feeling too much, or not feeling at all.

This is a necessary book written about depression and anxiety by someone who has suffered from his teenage years and been on medication for a large part of his life. Some of the research is astonishing - especially around the drugs used to treat depression and how they pass safety checks.

"So you could have a situation in which there are 1000 scientific trials, and 998 find the drug doesn't work at all, and two find there is a tiny effect - and that means the drug will be making its way to your local pharmacy."

There is good work here looking at the placebo effect and on society's attitudes to mental illness. It is a worthwhile book and should be read by anyone trying to understand a friend with depression or trying to find a way out of their own pain - you will know you are not alone.

I was given copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

A clear and practical look at tackling depression. Challenging our perspectives on what depression and anxiety are, what sufferers deal with daily and has practical advice on how to support those dealing with these struggles.

I've read quite a few books on depression due to my job and many follow a similar format. Lost Connections made a refreshing change, focusing on the lost connections that occur in life which can cause us to suffer from depression and how to reconnect in order to feel better.

Hari provides the reader with evidence-based information from the top researchers in the field. Despite that, it's written in an accessible way so you won't get bogged down by the science. There is a hefty reference section at the end of the book for those who want to delve deeper.

I really thought-provoking read!

Interesting read. having mental health issues run in my family and a few close friends it made it more real for me. In this day and age almost everyone is being made of mental health wellness and I can recommend this as a must read.

A really interesting and thought-provoking book that offers interesting ideas on depression and ways in which to deal with it. I think some parts can be hard-going if you don't have a specific scientific interest but I thought the practical advice on dealing with some mental health issues could be hugely helpful to many.

I have not read this type of book before and would probably have not looked on the shelves in a book store for what I would class as a “self help” book. I must say I found this book very interesting especially as depression runs deep in my family and for 4 generations that I know of excluding me thankfully but also think this is because of the life I “fell into” with my choice of husband and friends. I was really interested in the views that medication is not the answer and lifestyle plays such an important part i.e changing the way we think and wish it was that easy for some people close to me. I am going to recommend this book to a family member and hope she takes comfort in the words especially as it is written by someone who has been down the road of depression and anxiety. Well written, informative and very interesting

A very important book about a topic that touches us all.

“You aren't a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met. You need to have community. You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you've been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects. You need to have meaningful work. You need the natural world. You need to feel you are respected. You need a secure future. You need connections to all these things. You need to release any shame you might feel for having been mistreated."

Every one of us knows someone suffering from depression. We might even have suffered from it ourselves. No matter what your connection to it is, you are bound to be touched by it once or several times in your lifetime. When he was just a teenager, Johann Hari was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants. For years he stayed on them – gradually increasing the dose with the help of his physician. Yet, they never quite seemed to work. This book is Hari’s research into the topic of depression and anxiety disorders. He travelled around the world, read countless stories and, most importantly, talked to a number of physicians and researchers about the topics. He identified eight “causes” of depression. Reading it, they all make sense, and you might say “duh!”, but they have not been accepted be psychiatrists across the world. Moving on, Hari then goes through possibilities of solving these causes and thus the problem itself. He agrees that it is not easy to solve, but this book is definitely a start. I don't agree with everything in this book, and it was at times difficult to get through. But I do believe it is a very important book that EVERYONE should read, no matter where they are in life, which is why I give it five stars. So, go and read this book, even if you don’t think you need it!

In writing Lost Connections journalist Johan Hari set out on a quest to discover why so many people (himself included) have suffered and continue to suffer from depression and anxiety, and what can be done about it. During his investigation Hari tracked down some unusual and forgotten pieces of research, which could have made the book very dry, but instead his retelling of them made it an informative and compelling read.

I enjoyed how Hari wove his own personal story into the book alongside the army of people he seemed to meet along the way. He spent time in the UK, Australia, Germany and America investigating the subject, and throughout the book there are pertinent examples from his travels from experts in science, anthropology and medicine, as well as his own friends and others he met on his journey.

The book is split into three parts, in Part I ‘The Crack in the Old Story’ Hari contextualises his journey and explains how he changed his own view regarding his mental health, in particular the function and effectiveness of anti-depression drugs. In part two Hari identifies nine causes of depression and anxiety, or ‘disconnections’ as he terms them. Among these he cites a disconnections from other people, the natural world and meaningful work. Finally in Part III he looks at how we can find ‘reconnection’ in ways other than in pill form. Hari attempts to address the causes in part II by exploring in detail stories of people who have overcome their issues with depression.

Overall Lost Connections truly is a wonderful piece of investigative journalism. Hari doesn't claim to have all of the answers to depression but he goes a long way to providing a basis for which we can move forward as individuals and as a society.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

I think I was not the right audience for this book - given my own personal mental health I thought it would be exactly what I needed/wanted to read however I found this one tough to get through. It felt a little childish (or over simplified) and did not resonate well with me.
As I said, I think this is just perhaps my take on the piece and also my current state - perhaps in the future I will try again and have a more pleasant reading experience.

I will say that the mid level rating is because I am incredibly glad that more and more books are talking about this subject and coming in to more public spheres - this can only be a good thing!

This is an interesting read and certainly he makes some good arguments. I know a few people take issue with what he says in the book. Depression and it’s causes and treatment are very complicated but he has some good insights. If you like Matt Haig’s books about anxiety and depression you’ll probably enjoy this. Thanks to Netgalley for the advance reader copy.

I have followed Johann Hari for a while and so I jumped at the chance to review this book. I found this such an important read and it did make me think about the reasons behind depression in an interesting way however I did find the ideas to be too simplified. There are many people who take antidepressants, have an enjoyable job, have autonomy over their lives and a supportive social circle who still find themselves being depressed which Hari's theories fail to explain.

I did enjoy this book and would recommend it however I would recommend it as part of a larger set of books to read on this topic rather than as one book that is going to provide the answers.

A long overdue counter-argument to the prevalent view that depression is solely the result of a malfunctioning brain, and that all it needs are SSRIs to fix it.

Hari presents nine causes by investigating various emotional needs that we have, for example, the need for security, community, or purpose. He quotes a wealth of case studies (including his own personal experience) and scientific research into each cause, and how a disconnection from any of them can pave the way for depression. The good news is that the second half of the book offers numerous suggestions and resources for ways to reconnect.

Clear and insightful, I'd recommend it both to friends and people in the counselling/therapy profession.

What a fabulous book. Why?

Firstly, I don’t think Johann Hari’s research has shown anything that a lot of people don’t already know – that ‘simple’ depression at least (ie not bipolar) is rarely if ever just due to a chemical imbalance and that for this reason, antidepressants rarely work. He explains well backed-up research showing this to be the case but admits that when he took his research to eminent psychiatrists and others in the mental health field, they were shockingly unsurprised at his findings that antidepressants largely worked no better than placebos. So, while these findings are not new, his summary and coverage of the research is good and he presents this in a clear way … and indeed some people may find this a shocking conclusion, especially those suffering from or close to someone suffering from depression.

Secondly, Johann Hari puts forward explanations for depression that point more to social, environmental and psychological roots than chemical, and again this isn’t new; although historically the biological cause was stressed more, these days most people understand the complex interplay of other factors, particularly psychological ones.

The reason this book is so good is the way the author explains his research, intersperses this with personal and very moving stories from people he met along the way, and analyses the causes (though he admits this isn’t an exhaustive list) as ‘lost connections’ – with self, others, and meaningful values in our modern – and sick - society. His arguments ring very true and this is another reason I found this book so good; it resonated very deeply with what I have observed and have talked about with friends – that our western society throws all kinds of values at us daily that are incompatible with a truly meaningful life, telling us that we are ‘not right’ if we do not have the right things, do not look the right way etc, and our fear and shame lead us to isolation from one another.

Hari believes depression is actually not a sickness or biochemical imbalance but actually a healthy and expected response to pain, whether the obvious griefs of bereavement or less-than-ideal upbringing or the less obvious grief of being disconnected from people in our modern western society … and the only solutions come not from pills but exploring and coming to terms with these sources of grief and, where possible, changing things for the better.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I was with him 100% up to this point, even Johann Hari does not have the power to change many things that run deep. Thus the final third of the book – where Hari outlines possible solutions to the problems outlined thus far – was less good. Hari is not to blame; it is simply that the societal transformation required is so huge that it cannot easily be tackled. However, he does have some ideas of things that people can do personally, and even if these practical measures are small, I feel the book still has enormous value. This is because for many people, just reading the first half and perhaps recognising some things they hadn’t previously thought about may, in itself, provide very valuable insights – and those insights might themselves be of enormous value in beginning to change those things that bring us so low.

So, while I found the final third of the book a little disappointing – perhaps inevitably so – without doubt this is a timely analysis not only of depression but actually of the age in which we live. It is an analysis but that’s not to say it’s a difficult-to-understand scientific document. On the contrary, it is full of personal anecdote, of sad but also uplifting stories.

Above all, this book MAKES SENSE of why so many people – and certainly not just those labelled as depressed – feel bad about themselves or about life or relationships in our society today..

I was interested to read this book from a viewpoint of how we might prevent depression, if, as the author claims they know why it happens. Also to be an advocate for those that suffer, to try to be informed.

The book has several pages of mainly celebrity endorsements at the beginning some of which had attracted me to the book, however know I have read it I wonder did any of these people actually read the book? Then came the longest prologue I have ever read followed by an even longer introduction.

This is not in my opinion a self help book - if you are depressed wading through this book I would not think as helpful to you - there may be some useful nuggets in there, but really the style of writing is more text book than self help with lots of research quotes. Although the author has suffered from long term depression I'm not sure many people would identify with him and his experiences.

Once the book began to examine the placebo effect and the history of anti-depressants I began to be more interested. Then I got angry as I read about drug trials and how they can be manipulated just like any statistics to show what the drug companies want them to. Basically the legal way this is achieved. I felt the way in which this was explained was very down to earth and easily understood.

Unfortunately the book does repeat itself several times - in fact the author sets this up by saying he will be going over this again later in the book. In a paper version this would be ok but on a kindle I found it a little annoying as I couldn't easily dip in and out.

I did find a lot of the book interesting. Some of the authors conclusions about the lost connections are being put into practice in the NHS with courses in some areas of the country being offered to people in art, pottery etc and to also provide a connection to others.

I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. My thanks to netgalley for an ARC to review.

We live in a society where our mental health is discussed now more than ever, which is truly a good thing. This book helps us to consider the root of our depression or anxiety and how we begin working through that. A worthwhile read for anyone struggling with, or even interested in, mental health.

As a suffer of both depression and social anxiety it made a refreshing change reading a self help book that looked at non medical ideas and techniques on how to approach the ‘black dog’

Thank you to both NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for my eARC in exchange for my honest unbiased review

For anyone who is either interested in or enraged by how the pharmaceutical industry has sought to capitalise on our difficulties to deal with mental health issues brought on by modern Western life, this is for you.

It paints a bleak picture of how we are unwittingly having the hell medicated out of us, by an industry insisting our difficulties in surviving are due to our poor mental health, rather than our inability to connect with people to resolve our issues.

Yes, we used to talk and lean on each other. Now? We’re all ill, and if we don’t get over that bereavement or break up in an increasingly abhorrently short period of time it’s because we have something wrong with our brains. “We can help – take our drugs. Oh, evidence of efficacy? Just trust us”.

Except the emerging evidence suggests we cannot trust that the drugs do work, and what we really crave is the lost ability to form meaningful relationships, to learn how to talk again to soften the blows in life. The later stages of this book give a framework on how we can reconnect.

Is it a practical self – help guide? Not really. It’s more a damning commentary on a sick society and how we need to and can change….as a society.

It really is a tour de force in how mental health is being wrongly diagnosed and treated. But more than this, it relies on not merely opinion but evidence to back up the arguments.

Criticisms? Well, there are two:

1. I can’t comment with any authority whether the supportive data has been cherry-picked. I suspect there’s an element of that, but I guess that’s the same with any similar book.

2. It really is too long. While the author is extremely adept at story telling – you really are drawn into the examples provided – there are occasions when it’s too drawn out. It could be shorter by 10-20% with no loss of impact.

Thoroughly recommended and a must – read.

There are many causes of depression but modern medicine sees treatment as mainly down to adding chemicals into the system. In this book Hari looks at those causes and explores other viewpoints regarding this modern epidemic. This is a learned but slightly annoying book in that Harry spends a long time making his points. There is a lot of common sense here but it seems buried at times.

Depression still has such a stigma about it, much like cancer used to. But it is at epidemic levels and lots of us have tried the pills to try and recover from it.
So I came to this book really wanting to learn more about why the drugs don't always work after all. Hari hits the ground running in this book, arguing for both sides along the way and looks at many different possible causes for depression, that aren't a chemical imbalance in the brain after all.

Well written and argued, you've convinced me! Thanks Johann.