Depression is a silent epidemic which is taking a toll of thousands of lives annually. But no one talks about it .
In India alone there are more than 1.5 million people suffering from depression & need immediate medical intervention.
But why are we so shy about openly discussing about the topic?
Reasons
we don't have a clean definition which separates clinical depression from other trivial day to day issues. Like we club anxiety, sadness, mood off with depression. You must have often heard people saying after a breakup that "i feel depressed", or after a bad day at work we may say "alas i feel so depressed today". But mayb we are just tired, or having a bad mood, anxiety or sadness. Its not going to be prolonged. But depression is a prolonged, perpetual sense of unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, worthlessness
Depression has been stigmatized in the society. We often call a depressed person or any person with mental illness as a "Mad-man" , "retarded" , "sulky" , "pagal" (in colloquial hindi language). We start staying aloof from such people further aggravating there condition.
There isnt enough studies available either. there is no one medicine, no one treatment, takes years to show miniscule improvement. Hefty & jargons confuses local illiterate people further. Names of diseases seems to have come from Dr. Johnson's dictionary. Its so tough even for native english speakers to even pronounce some of them. Therefore people club all mental diseases under single umbrella called "MADNESS"
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Untill we educate people, raise awareness among the masses, invest more on researches, make simple yet distinct defination for mental illness, no one would take it seriously. The social stigma needs to be done away with , so that more people come out of darkness and visit psychiatrist and psychologists. Its high time we start taking mental diseases seriously and stop trivializing them.
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