A recent study found that depression is not only an unpleasant mental disorder, but also a potential physical threat as well. Of course it has long been known that people suffering from depression are more at risk of suicide, but what a recent study by the WHO (World Health Organisation) shows is that in terms of impact on life, depression is worse than angina and asthma.
Sufferers of depression should not think that there are inherent physical risks with depression. What is being talked about here seems to be the exacerbation of symptoms which are already present due to a physical condition.
The author of the report, Dr Moussavi, said that more needs to be done to stop medical professionals ignoring or failing to see depression when treating patients for other conditions. This is of course a difficult problem to tackle for several reasons.
Firstly, those people who are being treated for serious conditions may show some signs of depression. In fact, no one that’s in hospital looks particularly happy about it. Also, people greatly fear the stereotype of depression and may not take kindly to being labelled as depressed.
The most important lesson to be learnt is that people with depression don’t respond as well to treatment for physical conditions as well as non-depressed people. Therefore recognizing, treating and preventing depression must be a much bigger priority than it is now.
