The Age Of Anxiety: Exhaustion And Depression

Here's an op-ed from yesterday's Boston Globe from a writer who claims she'd always thought stars and such suffering from exhaustion were doing it as a cover for bad habits. Her mind was turned around a bit by the case of Diane Patrick, wife of Mass. Governor Deval Patrick, who stepped out of public life a couple of months back after, according to accounts I've read, she worked herself into exhaustion and a bout of depression between maintaining a law practice and being First Lady. She's back in action now. The author is a wee bit less skeptical of exhaustion being excuse mongering now.

Americans are more productive than we have ever before been in our history, working well over 40 hours a week in many cases. And people wonder why there is plenty of depression, anxiety and general agitation to go around in America.

On a semi-related note, a reader passed along a site detailing the belief that caffeine over-use is at the heart of mental illnesses. I am fairly skeptical of such claims (there's a certain bit of horse sense there, but I'd like to see some thorough research as opposed to the thinly-detailed claims on the site. However, claiming that caffeine is related to psychosis is just nutso). If researchers would ever like to do a large real world study, then they ought to come to Seattle. I doubt that Starbuck's would underwrite the study. Joking aside, it is staggering just how much caffeine shows up in drinks these days--Red Bull, caffeinated waters and such--as opposed to the usual suspects of coffee, tea and soft drinks.