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What's fueling the rise in depression?

St. Joseph News-Press - 7/9/2017

July 09--Anyone might be depressed if they suffered from the same ailments and troubles as Bob Duke.

The 63-year-old St. Joseph man lost his job on the railroad and had to go on disability in 1993. Since that time, Duke has had more troubles than a blues singer.

He's had two knee operations, two shoulder operations, a neck operation and a disc removed from his back. He had both hips replaced, suffers from fibromalgia and went through a divorce, colon cancer and the death of a son. He is losing his hearing and takes 40 pills a day to deal with all of it.

Darn right he's depressed.

"Every day is like a bad Christmas present," Duke said.

Apparently misery loves company. Duke is one of more than 300 million people worldwide who suffers from depression, according to a World Health Organization study. That makes it the leading cause of ill health and disability on earth.

Kristina Hannon, vice president of behavioral health for Family Guidance Center, said that math comes out to roughly 1 out of 4 people worldwide.

"It's actually increased 18 percent in a 10-year period, so from 2000 to 2010 the World Health Organization has determined that there's actually an 18.4 percent increase in depression worldwide," she said.

These numbers are concerning because of the associated economic toll that's incurred across the world due to depression, Hannon added. It's estimated that those 300 million people who are living with depression are costing about $4 trillion in terms of lost productivity and the cost to economies around the world.

"Also what the World Health Organization found is depression is the leading cause of disability claims worldwide," Hannon said.

When the data is broken down, it revealed that there's three main groups who suffer from depression: older adults, young people and prenatal and postnatal women.

"People typically think pregnancy is a very joyous time, happy time for most women but for many people it's not," Hannon said. "There also a lot of hormonal changes that occur with pregnancy and women may not be prepared for the toll that it takes on them and they may not feel comfortable talking to their families about it."

With young people, increased depression leads to a correlated spike with suicide, she added.

"We know that there were over 800,000 suicides in the world in 2015 and many of those deaths can be correlated with some sort of depression," Hannon said.

She said that part of the increase in depression can be blamed on an increase in the population of certain countries. Most of it is found in the middle- to low-income countries, which is consistent with what we see here in the United States.

"There's always this controversy, does mental illness cause poverty or does the stress of chronic poverty cause mental illness? That's really one of those, which came first, the chicken or the egg, things," Hannon said.

Depression increases the risk of several major medical conditions, including addiction, suicidal behavior, diabetes and heart disease.

"Like the classic signs of depression, persistent low mood and loss of pleasure, these more subtle symptoms can also affect how well a person is doing and how well a person is functioning," said Dr. John Zajecka, professor of psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in a Today.com web site article.

The good thing is that depression can be treated, Zajecka said.

"Depression is generally treated with medication, psychotherapy or a combination of both. Depression is very common and there is good help," he said.

Duke said besides the medicine, talking to his grandchildren and his son is what keeps him going. Water aerobics also helps.

"It feels like nothing matters .... some days are worse than others," he said.

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