Depression is a more disabling condition than angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes, World Health Organisation research shows. And those with depression plus a chronic illness, such as diabetes, fare particularly badly, the study of more than 245,000 people suggests.
Better treatment for depression would improve people’s overall health, the researchers concluded in the Lancet. Experts called for better funding for mental health services.
Dr Somnath Chatterji and colleagues asked people from 60 countries taking part in the World Health Survey a variety of questions about their health, such as how they sleep, how much pain they have, and whether they have any problems with memory or concentration.
Participants were also asked about how they manage with day-to-day tasks.
After taking into account factors such as poverty and other health conditions, the researchers found that depression had the largest effect on worsening health.
And people with depression who also had one or more chronic diseases had the worst health scores of all the diseases looked at or combinations of diseases.
This information is all well and good. The problem here is that the medical system is still using an allopathic approach to disease. This means they focus on the symptoms and not the causes of the symptoms. I have worked with a few people with depression and have managed to help them to either reduce dramatically or completely eliminate the need for medication.
Stay tuned to find out how…