Is the World More Depressed?

'I’VE been in and out of India for years, but on a recent visit to Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, it seemed that suicide and depression had become part of the social conversation in a way that was once taboo.

I spoke with a young woman who, after a quarrel with her parents, took enough pills to land her in intensive care, and to an evangelical Christian who said that God had told him to give a sermon about suicide. He said he asked God, “Is this even a topic to be spoken about?”

Rangaswamy Thara, a psychiatrist and director of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation there, described this shift: “Someone fails his exams, so he commits suicide. He is rebuked by his father, so he commits suicide.” At the same time, there seem to be many more people in Chennai seeking help for emotional and psychiatric problems than there were 10 years ago, Dr. Thara said.

Maybe, she said, it has to do with increased awareness of mental illness — better psychiatric outreach, or more people writing advice columns in the local papers. But maybe, she said, people are just more frustrated.

Is there more suicide and depression in India these days and, for that matter, across the rest of the globe? Possibly. The World Health Organization reports that suicide rates have increased 60 percent over the past 50 years, most strikingly in the developing world, and that by 2020 depression will be the second most prevalent medical condition in the world.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/opinion/a-great-depression.html