Depression Statistics—A Growing Health Problem

Depression is a condition or a state of low mood, being down, and/or having aversion to activities, including those that are previously pleasurable to a person. It affects a sufferer’s thoughts, feelings, behavior, and even physical health at times. People who are depressed are generally full of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness, helplessness, guilt, restlessness, irritability, and even experience diffused fear of the unknown. Often times, depressed people also suffer from a separate anxiety disorder or substance abuse.

It is common to see a person suffering from this condition to experience lack of appetite, overeating, lack of interest, isolation, inability to concentrate, poor job performance, indecisiveness, and physical symptoms like pain and loss of bodily functions that are resistant to treatment. For severe cases, killing one’s self may be seen as the end of the line. About 15% of depressed people contemplate and actually commit suicide (with the figure still growing). And by 2020, experts say that depressive disorders will replace cancer as the 2nd largest American killer, occupying a comfortable spot right next to heart diseases.

In the United States, roughly 18.8 million American adults are affected by depressive disorders. This accounts to 9.5% of the total population of people with ages 18 and above. Each year, 12.0% of women, translating to 12.4 million, are affected by some form of depressive disorder. As for men, about half of the women’s affected population is affected annually, which is equivalent to 6.6% or 6.4 million in the US alone.

Studies have found that depressive disorders are appearing earlier in life as seen in people who were born in recent years compared to the ones born earlier. Pre-schoolers, ages 3-5, are observed as the fastest-growing users of antidepressants. As of today, about 4% of preschool kids, equivalent to more than a million, are popping pills due to some form of depressive disorder. The rate of increase in the general population of children is an astonishing 23% per annum.

Depressed people account to more absenteeism than any other physical condition in the US. Absenteeism, along with decreased productivity rate, expensive medical bills, including medications, all cost employers an enormous fortune of more than $51 billion per annum. This is a huge loss in the American economy, especially now that it is suffering from recession.
Other interesting facts about depressive disorders: 15% of the population of most industrialized countrie

s is suffering from severe depressive disorders. New estimates for men suffering from the same condition is said to be growing. With the population of females being affected with the condition yearly, 41% of them are too ashamed to seek professional and domestic help. About 92% of African-American males who are depressed don’t undergo treatment—that’s more than half of the women’s non-seeking population. Currently, 80% of people who are depressed are not having treatment.

For some reason, the population of depressed people in America and other industrialized countries is increasing. Anthropologists, psychologists, and other experts partly blame the current lifestyle of Americans for this increase of the depressed population. They believe that it has a major role in the people’s susceptibility do depressive disorders.