Symptoms of Depression

Discuss about the Maternal Depression and Its Factors.

Depression is a common but a serious mental disorder that is negatively affecting the ways individuals feel about themselves, the ways they think and the ways they react. This disorder is mainly seen to cause a feeling of sadness as well as loss of interest in activities that the individuals used to enjoy once in their lives. This can lead to various types of emotional as well as physical problems that in turn affect and decrease the ability of the individuals to function at work as well as at homes (1). A number of symptoms remain intricately associated with the occurrence of depression. Individuals are seen to feel sad and have depressed mood along with partial or complete loss of interest in tasks that are once enjoyed. Moreover, changes in appetite are also noticed along with loss or gain of weight that are unrelated to any dieting issues. Individuals are also seen to suffer from troubled sleeping or they can be seen to sleep too much (2). Loss of energy as well as increased fatigue, increase in the purposeless physical activities as well as feeling of worthlessness or guilt is also observed. Besides, difficulty in thinking, concentrating as well as making of decisions is also affected when individuals support from depression. Many individuals are also seen to suffer from thoughts of death and even conduct suicides. Therefore, it can be easily seen that people who are affected by depression lead very poor quality lives (3). Therefore, it is extremely important for the healthcare professionals to understand the factors that contribute to depression in details so that effective interventions can be applied and patients can be ensured high quality lives (4). In this assignment, the three important factors like education, low income and gender inequality would be discussed along with the ways about how it affects people making them suffer from depression.

Depression tends to first appear in the adolescents as well as in the early adulthood period. Researchers are of the opinion that about 25% of the people who develop a depressive disorder mainly do so before the age of 20 years and about 50% of the depression cases are seen to occur before the age of 30 years. Depression is mainly seen to be the frequently managed mental health programs for young people aged between 12 to 24 years. Moreover, about 13.5% of the cases of mental health disorders that are handled by the general practitioners are found to be related to disorder of depression (5). Lifetime prevalence of depression is 16.6% and the rates are found to be higher among the young females as compared to young males. Other researchers have found out that every year, about 3 in 100 Australian males between the age 12 to 24 years and 1 in 10 females of the same age will have a depressive disorder.

Educational Pressure and Depression

Education is one of the most important factors that lead to depression. In the present generation, the students mainly due to academic pressure experience huge amount of pressure. The academics in the present generation have been quite challenging and are therefore overriding the joys of education. Students are seen to become more anxious as well as depressed when they are not able to perform well as per expected by themselves. The failure to achieve good marks in the examination even after trying their best makes them sad. Repeated issues faced by the students failing to get marks as expected make them undergo in the phase of depression that makes it difficult for them to come out (6). This results them to suffer from poor quality lives where they socially exclude themselves from the rest of the friends, families and society. Moreover, some parents are highly ambitious and provide excessive pressure on their wards. Often it is seen that the parents pressurizes their wards to achieve high marks in their academics even when their wards might not want to pursue such subjects in their future life or may not find them interesting. Such pressure over a constant period creates anxiety in the children and they tend to lose love and liking on the subjects (7). When such subjects are taught to them in a forceful manner, it becomes stressful for them that make them go into phases of depression. Repeated comparisons done by parents of their own wards along with other meritorious children also make the, depressed and in course of time they lose their confidence, enthusiasm and hope to overcome barriers and become successful. These engulf them in the darkness of hopelessness and they tend to lose the will to live life. They tend to become more suicidal and prone to self-harm. Often such depression results them to take up the use of different types of substance like smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol and other drugs that exposes the children to a poor quality life (8). Such children tend to develop into adults who are not only affected by substance abuse disorders but are also poor in education and thereby suffer from financial problems. Moreover, as students tend to get promoted through different standards in their schools, colleges and universities, it is seen that the depth and hardness level of education also increases. In the present day of competitive worlds, every organization only tends to appoint individuals who have the brightest educational career and have the best-developed skills. Therefore, the scope narrows and number of aspirants increases (9). Such competitions may affect individuals negatively when they fail repeatedly. Such issues also result in development of depression among the aspirants that affect them not only mentally but also physically.

Income Inequality and Depression

The unequal distribution of income as well as wealth has been growing steadily over the past three decades in astonishing levels. This is in turn fuelled by the wide adoption of the neo-liberal policies as well as the globalization. In the year 2016, it was seen that the top ten persons of the world owned 89% of the global assets whereas the bottom half of the global population was seen to collectively own less than one percent of the total wealth. Such income variances make scenarios quite clear (10). Comparative studies have shown that people of high socio-economic classes are seen to be happier in comparison to people living in the low socio-economic classes. Low-income people are seen to be highly depressed as they have a constant fear about how to meet up the financial requirements needed to maintain an average equality life. People with low income are seen to remain stressed for paying rents or mortgage , the requirements to pay for the electricity bills and even to smaller requirements like repairing of cars. Often tensions are also found among individuals regarding how to meet the basic requirements in life when they would retire and many others. Such important activities require economic strengths and when people fail to meet such requirements, it results in affecting not only mental stability but also result in depression and several other physical issues. The individuals are also seen to suffer from shamelessness and this makes them withdrawn from the society resulting them in suffering from depression (11). Low income also affects the ability of family members to fetch food items and necessities of daily lives to the other members of the family which in turn exposes the main head to suffer from hopelessness, feeling of loss and inability to stand up to the expectations of the family members. Such a feeling is often described to be humiliating as well as painful for the concerned individual and in such a situation; it becomes very difficult for the person to maintain the mental stability. Therefore, the persons become vulnerable to development of depression that in turn affects the quality of life of not only the person but also the family members. Struggling to get by with a low income often is seen to lead stress. Worrying about the finances can affect moods of the individuals as well as affecting sleep, eating habits as well as quality of relationships. Low income may lead to poor diet too that also have impacts on mental as well as emotional well being. All these result in depression of individuals making them suffer from poor quality lives (12).

Gender Inequality and Depression

In most of the traditional as well as in-transitions societies, the superiority of men to that of the women is considered to be one of the great barriers for the progress of women in the social life. Researchers have found out that women have limited job opportunities in the societies, which make them, always suffer from stress and anxiety to prove her to be independent or to keep it in a tight competition with men. Often-such pressures in the workplace results the women to pass on their problems to their houses where they express anger from inequality to their other members. Realization of such behaviors as well as inability to balance both the pressures and failing to tackle both the sides effectively results in creation of depression among the women. Many researchers opine that gender inequalities faced by the women are often seen to percolate through the system (13). The experienced women who have already faced such inequalities but are now on higher positions tend to behave similarly with the novice women who are new to the firms. These affect the novice employees largely making them suffer from anxiety and depression. However, this fact is not backed up by many evidence-based articles and therefore cannot be supported entirely. Different types of social processes are there that are seen to sort and typecast women into certain jobs. Moreover, many situations compensate women less than their equivalent male counterparts that thereby create gender disparities even when both the genders are possessing equal qualifications as well as experiences (14). Therefore, these sorts of gender inequalities make the women feel helpless where they feel anxious about their career as well as about their present condition in the organizations. These have psychosocial consequences. Data had been gathered from about 22000 workers from the age of 30 to that of 65 where it was seen that women were twice likely to suffer from depression in the past year. Therefore, such inequalities make them vulnerable to development of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, social exclusion, loneliness and others and hence affect quality life (15).

WHO is now considering depression as one of the priority conditions which are covered by WHO’s mental health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP). This program is mainly aimed to help different nations to develop and increase services for people with mental as well as neurological and substance abuse disorders mainly through the care provided by healthcare professionals who are not specialized in mental health management. Like many other agencies, WHO has developed brief psychosocial intervention manuals for depression that may be delivered by lay workers (16). One of the examples can be provided here. One of them is the Problem Management Plus that are mainly seen to describe the utilization of the behavioral actions, relaxation training, strengthening social support as well as problem solving treatment. The manual Group Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) for Depression is also helpful in describing group treatment of depression. Moreover, another attempt called the Thinking Healthy is useful in covering the utilization of cognitive-behavioral therapy for perinatal depression (17).  On the national level, beyond blue is one of the Australian independent nonprofit organizations that are working to address various issues faced by the national citizens mainly in cases of depression, suicide, anxiety disorders as well as other mental disorders. The organization working on the national level has found out that about 3 million people are living with anxiety or depression. One very interesting thing about their approach is that they have handled every cohort separately starting with young people, women, men, older people, multicultural people, indigenous people, homosexual people as well as pregnancy and early parenthood. Different causes are there in different categories and therefore they are handled differently among different groups. Resources for help are present in a distinctive manner  like with categories as in schools and universities, workplaces, aged care, health professionals and others and thereby help the individuals to get access to not only services but also help them to gather information and knowledge about the disorders (18). Besides, this several initiatives are also produced. One of them was the National Perinatal Depression Initiative that mainly aims for the improvement of the prevention as well as the early detection of the antenatal as well as the postnatal depression. These initiatives developed the better screening, support as well as treatment of the expectant and new mothers who are experiencing depression (19). It was allocated for a period of 5 years with routine and universal screening, follow up treatment, training and development of healthcare professionals as well as researching and collection of data including prevention activities. Another initiative that was also taken was the publication of policy called the “Prevention of depression and anxiety in Australian schools” by the Black Dog Institute in the month of October 2016. This policy mainly provided information about evidence based programs that will prevent the onset of mental ill health like depression by providing a summary of the evidence-based school prevention programs. This mainly aimed at developing help seeking attitude, reduction of stigma and prevention of depression and anxiety in the youth.

From the entire discussion above, it becomes extremely important for the healthcare professionals to understand how different factors are associated with the occurrence of depression. Stress arising from education among the students and low incomes resulting in poor financial stability are the factors that cause depression in women. Moreover, inequality in gender pay gap and opportunity also result in development of depression among women. WHO has identified it as one of the most important disorder that is affecting every nations and its people largely. Therefore, it has helped the entire world by the introduction of a huge number of initiatives in the nation. Such initiatives are evidence based and are expected to help every people of every nation to get access to services for proper screening and proper treatment. This would ensure effective development of the patients helping them to lead better quality lives.

References:

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