While everyone is doing a good job highlighting income disparity and poverty as reasons for depression I think we should also note that in the US we most neighborhoods are severely lacking in access to nature, green spaces, or communal spaces in general. This is especially so in poorer neighborhoods. As we've come to live in an increasingly digital era with digitally focused lives the lack of chance in-person encounters or participation in the public realm have continued to decrease. The cheapest forms of entertainment now are all digital. The access of convenience is a slippery slope that drops people further into isolation. So we are dealing with a multi faceted amplification of depressive forces. Financial insecurity, isolating city planning, and isolating forms of entertainment.

Prior to the internet age we had to socialize with intention but now social media and our phones act as a proxy of socialization and grants us superficial forms of interactions with our friends and family. Pair this with neighborhoods built around isolating cars and single family homes without any form of communal space and we have a population starved of attention, community, green-space and ultimately joy.