Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions

Endogenous depression is “the kind caused just by a malfunctioning brain or body” (183). Hari argues this type of depression only affects “a tiny minority of depressed people” (183).

The FDA is a United States federal government agency that manages the regulation of food, medicine, and related products. Among the FDA’s functions is the approval of new drugs, following public safety guidelines. 

The grief exception refers to a provision in one edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). According to this provision, a patient should not be diagnosed with clinical depression if they lost a loved one less than a year ago. The grief exception was removed from the latest edition of the DSM at the time of Hari’s writing (53-54).

Hari defines intrinsic values as “the things you do purely because you value them in and of themselves, not because of anything you get out of them” (115). On the other hand, extrinsic values are “the things you do not because you actually want to do them, but because you’ll get something in return—whether it’s money, or admiration, or sex, or superior status” (115).

A placebo is a drug or a medical treatment that has no actual medical value, but the patient believes it will have a beneficial effect. The placebo effect refers to the phenomenon when such treatments help the patient anyway, apparently because of the patient’s beliefs. 

“Precariat” is Hari’s term for workers who, instead of finding full-time work, go from job to job with no guarantee of security or stability (172). This kind of work has become more common than stable, full-time employment. It is a pun on the word “proletariat,” which refers to the working class, and implies precariousness.