Positive approach in life, helping attitude towards needy people, leading simple life, following religious teachings and showing tolerance can be helpful in avoiding depression and other mental ailments.
This was crux of lecture delivered by Head Department of Psychiatry Fatima Jinnah Medical College, Professor Dr Haroon Rashid Chaudhry to a select gathering of family physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers on the topic of 'identification and management of depression' at a local hotel here on Monday.
Professor Haroon maintained that symptoms of depression include irritability, marked loss of interest in daily activities, changes in appetite, trouble sleeping at night, daily fatigue or energy loss and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.
According to him, depression was linked to a greater overall risk of death, although it was not found to be associated with a higher risk of stroke. On average, symptoms of coronary artery disease surfaced in the students about 15 years after their initial bout of depression.
While the men suffering depression drank more coffee than those free of the illness, the two groups did not differ significantly in respective levels of blood pressure, cholesterol, cigarette smoking, physical activity, obesity or family history of coronary artery disease.
Professor Haroon Rashid revealed that according to WHO figures, 450 million people are suffering from some form of neuro-psychiatric disorders of which around 121 million are suffering from depression, and 800,000 die by suicide each year.
He further said there is a possibility that this number may increase with increasing life expectancies, rapidly changing psycho-social environment and its attendant stresses like effects of uprooting, family disintegration and social isolation and the increase in morbidity for chronic diseases like cardiovascular, cerebro-vascular, rheumatic, gastro-intestinal, psycho-sexual disorders and the excessive consumption of medications for varied diseases.
All these reasons justify the increase in prevalence of depression, so also morbidity and mortality. He said depression has been identified as a major public health problem and in terms of the burden of illness, it would rank second to ischaemic heart disease by 2020.
To a question, Professor Haroon said that women who are depressed are more likely to develop brittle bones late in life.
"If they continue to have depressions and continue to lose bone mineral density, then they will enter menopause already at a significant risk for fracture," he claimed.
He said various studies show that depressed women had up to 15 percent more bone loss than healthy women, and their chances of breaking a hip increased by 40 percent.
He further stated that one in every four Pakistanis is to face a mental health problem at some point in their lives. Mental illness, like physical illness, can affect anyone regardless of intelligence, social class or income level, he added.
"Mental illness is not a single disease but a broad classification for many disorders. Anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, personality disorders, eating disorders and organic brain disorders can cause misery, tears and missed opportunities', he added.
He said that stress is also early stage of depression, which is not usually presented with typical sadness, low mood and lack of interest in daily activity.
Majority of the time, patients present various physical symptoms like headache, backache, bodyache, gastrointestinal disturbances and various others somatic complaints, he pointed out.
Speaking on the occasion, writer and columnist, Ataul Haq Qasmi, said that people could lead healthy life by not indulging in lust for materialistic gains. He said mental illness in our society is common due to contradiction in our words and deeds.
He said, 'we must fulfil our obligations honestly and avoid from snatching rights of others'.
Dr Fatima Yousuf of Psychiatry Department Sir Ganga Ram Hospital also gave a presentation on suicide and its causes.
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