Depression: The most important thing anyone reading this needs to know is that everyone with depression will get better. The sooner you treat it the quicker and better the results. LIfe time prevalence 4%, in fact in the USA up to 10% struggle with depression. 280 million people world-wide suffer from depression. 20% risk of suicide in untreated depression. Used to be the 5th commonest cause of illness and death, now it is the commonest. It is not because we have all become genetically susceptible to clinical depression, rather we have become more and more unhappy and stressed with modern life. What has risen is social media with the pressure to be perfect compare and online bullying and economic uncertainty as well as recent lockdown and health hysteria and vaccine mandates and most recently Ukraine War and spiralling energy prices. Mental health referrals are at all time highs. Neuroscience New and Research July 2022 Ruairi J Mackenzie: Serotonin theory has been seen for years as an oversimplification. SSRI medications do often work in depression but depression is multifactorial and likely more than one illness.  The Biopsychosocial model of depression is preferred. Even Epicurus 2,500 years ago and before him Buddha both said that seeking of pleasure would cause unhappiness as pleasure is transient and leads to more seeking of it hence is not only meaningless but destructive. Yet as a society that is exactly what we have become: cyclical reflex dopamine seekers especially with social media. Furthermore the teaching of socialisation has been reversed with smart phone hunched pleasure seekers. We are all becoming depressed children with no effective parental supervision apart from the social media CEOs temping us ever further down the rabbit hole of instant gratification.. One of the definitions of the most dysfunctional members of our society namely personality disorders is self obsession as this is not tribe compatible yet the rest of us are rapidly heading that way pulling apart the integrity of our society and even civilisation itself if it continues. Close on the heals of self obsession is loss of boundaries and rules aka political correctness which is a Marxist view of demanding the same outcome for everyone despite the fact that everyone is different. Without boundaries we are lost  because we have evolved to function in tribes with structure hierarchy and leadership. Now we are led by self serving politicians who will say anything that gets them elected which is what they think the voters want but voters are influenced by mass and social media. Add into that that 98% of what we do and think is emotional and not logical which means that currently we are being led by media driven hysteria which the politicians respond to. Even more dangerous is that media controls the masses on a global scale now almost instantly. Diagnosis of clinical depression: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5th Edition Americal Psychiatric Association  and International Classification of Diseases 11th Edition 296. And F32 codes respectively: Require are certain number of symptoms for a certain period of time typically 5 symptoms for at least 2 weeks although this can be altered according to severity. Symptoms making up depression include: Low mood typically worse in the morning improving as the day goes on (diurnal mood variation)-  said to be due to raised levels of cortisol in depression with the coritsol peak being in the morning and lowest in the middle of the night-  I have seen severely depressed people walking around the ward at 2am feeling fine. This is one the reasons metyrapone is used with is a cortisol synthesis inhibitor in a resistant depressionL Ted Dinan et al. Disturbed sleep typically waking early in the morning...