Since moving to a Cornish village in the middle of nowhere, newspapers have become my new source of weekend entertainment. I’ve soon realised, however, just why I stopped reading them so frequently in the first place. I know that this sounds like the classic excuse for ignorance, but I really don’t like what I read. It only takes one Sunday Times for me to spend my Sunday evening rocking back and forth in a whirl of anxiety, worrying about terrorism, politics, the economy and the environment. In this instance I fail to see how knowledge is power.
The fact
that our prospects as a nation seem to be unremittingly plummeting coincides
with one issue that is constantly being reiterated recently. Depression and
other mental illnesses are on the rise, and are predicted to continue to do so.
The current statistic is that one in four people develop some
kind of mental illness at some point in their lives. In as little as eight years’ time, however, the
burden of mental illness on the world will only be second to that of HIV/Aids.
There are
many campaigns tackling the stigma attached to mental illness – and in 2003
this was one of the World Health Organisation’s key targets towards improving statistics. This doesn’t,
however, get to the root causes of the increase in depression. We need to be
looking at why this statistic is rising. One main factor is said to be the
economy – but there are only a certain proportion of people that have the
predisposition for something like this to trigger depression – so surely this
proportion must be on the increase?
Depression
is a complex illness, and there is no one definite cause. But with the
uncertainty of the future, global warming, the rapid pace of technological change and the rise
of internet communication over social interaction – is it existential? After all, as things continue to change beyond expectation,
we’re also being told that we’re living longer than previous generations.
With the increase in depression comes one big fat
burden – as it’s a risk factor for alcohol and substance abuse, cancer and heart
disease. It also affects work productivity. It’s clear to see that this will
become a cyclic problem.
Aside from the recession, there is evidence to suggest that those who regularly work 11 hours or more each day are more than twice as
likely to suffer depression as those who work 8. It seems that there are more
and more causes and risk factors emerging in the media. Is the increase in
information perhaps leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy in some cases?
Whether or
not the recession is the sole reason for the increase in depression – something
does need to be done beside tackling the stigmas attached to mental illness. Of
course, lack of awareness and misunderstanding exacerbates existing problems,
but before this becomes even more of a problem, the cause of the apparent
increase and further predicted increases in depression and anxiety needs to be
figured out and tackled before it feeds back into the economy and the process starts again. Either that or I could just stop buying newspapers.
This article is really great. I like it very much.
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