Medical Authorities representing the sovereign
governments of the World appear to be agreed in the identification of untreated DEPRESSION as being the main cause of suicide.
Untreated because it is Undiagnosed
This is extremely disturbing especially as
the World Health Organisation has warned the World that major depression will become the planet's second
most debilitating disease by the year 2020.
However, according to the New York based NARSAD:
'Major depression is already the leading cause of disability worldwide'. NARSAD could be
right...
The assertion that depression will become the world’s second most
debilitating disease (following heart disease) by the year 2020 is highly questionable.
Studies on depression have produced alarming figures. For example:
A depressed person, is four times more likely to suffer a heart attack than a non-depressed person .
It
appears that if a depressed person has a heart attack, he or she is four times more likely to die. Indeed research over the
past two decades has shown that depression and heart disease are common companions and, what is worse, one can lead to the
other.
Notwithstanding this crucial piece of information,
it is also self evident that; the higher the level of depression - the higher the level of suicide.
This ongoing rise in depression would certainly
explain the ongoing rise in suicide rates.
The 'Hellish' prospect of an ever increasing growth
of depression, prompts the question: "What will actually
happen after 2020?"
What will happen when depression
is officially the second biggest life-threatening disease on our planet?
Obviously depression will not simply end at this point. Nor will it become a thing consigned to a dark and
distant past. It will continue to rise and suicide rates will continue to rise with it.
Following 2020, the next health 'milestone' in global mental health will be the year in which
depression 'officially' replaces heart disease as the World's Number One Health problem.
And then what.......?
Unless checked. Suicide rates will continue to rise, claiming the lives of countless millions.
As these rates continue to grow, it is inevitable that we will eventually be confronted by the nightmare
scenario in which depression-related-suicide is the primary cause
of death of the human race.
In the same way that (for a wide range of reasons) we are faced with
an 'unknowable' number of suicides. We are also faced with an 'unknowable'
number of those suffering from suicide's official cause = untreated depression.
Being "undiagnosed" the actual number of sufferers is both unknown and unknowable.
With this in mind, not only is it possible that depression could easily become our World's second
most debilitating disease long before the year 2020. It may already have happened.
We simply don't know.
Reassuring isn't it?
