Mind the scourge.........depression

A news story appeared in telegraph India on 'state of depression in India'
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110814/jsp/7days/story_14377288.jsp

“Whatever be the symptoms, it’s possible to treat depression by simply bringing the levels of a brain chemical — serotonin — back to normal,” says Dr Om Prakash, associate professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences in Delhi, who treated Gupta.

The treatment is not expensive either. The most commonly used antidepressant — fluoxetine — costs just a few rupees, says Dr Prakash.

 

 In the smaller states there may be just one or two psychiatrists, adds Dr Prakash. For example, while Uttarakhand has one psychiatrist, Sikkim, which has the highest suicide rate in the country, has two. Even a relatively big state like Orissa has just six psychiatrists — four in Bhubaneswar and two in Cuttack.

 

Psychiatrists also feel that general practitioners should be sensitised about psychiatric disorders. “I fail to understand why a GP — who is comfortable with prescribing drugs for hypertension or diabetes or even cardiovascular diseases — does not prescribe medicines for depression,” says Dr Prakash.

Indeed, more often than not, when a person suffering from depression goes to a GP, he or she is given multi-vitamin pills or iron tonics to “take care of the lethargy or low energy”. What they fail to understand is these are physical manifestations of a mental problem, says Dr Prakash, and unless the root cause is addressed they will never go away.