This article is written by Oluwakemi M Linda Banks, PhD , Associate Professor of Psychology at Saint James School of Medicine and was originally published in The Anguillian Newspaper on the 25th of September, 2011.
Did you know that
- Two in every ten people suffer from depressive disorders?
- Only twenty five percent of those persons have been treated for this disorder?
- Depression is the most common mental health disorder?
- A depressed mood and a loss of interest or pleasure
- Feeling blue, hopeless, in the dumps, or worthless
- The depressed mood is very different from normal sadness or grief
- Patients talk about agonizing emotional pain and sometimes complain of being unable to cry
- About one third contemplate suicide and about 10 to 15% commit suicide
- Some depressed persons are unaware of their depression and do not complain but withdraw from family, friends and interests
- Other symptoms include: reduced energy, difficulty completing tasks, low productivity at work or school, being less motivated to take on new projects, trouble sleeping, early morning awakening, multiple awakenings at night, decreased or increased appetite, weight loss or gain, and sleeping longer than usual.
- Anxiety is found in 90% of cases of depression
- Persons with bipolar disorder will vacillate between very elevated grandiose moods, erratic, uninhibited irritable behaviour (manic) to depressed moods
- Depression can aggravate co-existing medical conditions like osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, eye disease and back pain
- Symptoms can also include abnormal menses and sexual problems
- Anxiety and alcohol abuse complicate treatment
- Depressed persons report more severe symptoms in the morning and a lessening by evening
- Cognitive symptoms include self reported inability to concentrate, and impairment in thinking
- Predictions are that depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020
- Depression contributes to fatal coronary disease
- Depression results in more absenteeism than almost any other physical disorder
- Eighty percent of people who visit physicians are depressed