OK, well, that's an easy rhetorical maneuver but one that can be met with equally facile ripostes, such as "how do you determine that people weren't just as if not more depressed in the 18th Century when the concept was less familiar?" or "perhaps having the gulf between themselves and the wealthy rubbed in their faces every day is what causes the distress, since there can be little sense of exploitation if one is surrounded only by those in similar straits."

Didn't people in the olden days also see the castles and mansions of the rich on a daily basis?

Daily I very much doubt because it’s not like most people were commuting to work. Would you sometimes see them, sure, but people also had a belief system that would have done more to justify the social order, and it would probably be limited to provincial elites for most.

Weren't a lot of towns built basically surrounding a castle?

I guess people in towns would see wealthy people often, but people in remote farms and villages wouldn't.

I'm not sure exactly what wealth is being rubbed in my face today. News about rich people? I would assume there would also be news and gossip about rich people back then too.

Fair criticism as usual and maybe I should have been more specific, but I didn't say anything about the 1700s or prior specifically. If we talk about trends in the lifespan of people alive today (which represents a huge number of people) the picture is much different.

My grandma (alive today) grew up with no indoor plumbing in the United States. They had to use an outhouse.

> In 1940 nearly half of houses lacked hot piped water, a bathtub or shower, or a flush toilet. Over a third of houses didn't have a flush toilet.

https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2004/data/papers/SS0...

Is it exploitation that's the problem?

Or social isolation? People are very isolated these days. People can have good jobs, have lots of shallow acquittances but no true friends.

You don't need to go back to the 1700s to find comparatively low levels of depression. The 1980s will do.