Facts and Statisitics

• Depression affects people of all social classes, all countries and all cultural settings.
• Depression affects at least one in 50 children under 12 and one in 20 teenagers.
• Women experience depression about twice as often as men.
• Men are less likely to admit to depression, and doctors are less likely to suspect it.
• As many as 3 out of four cases of depression are neither recognised nor treated.
• More than eight in ten people with depression can be helped with appropriate treatment.
• The World Health Organisation predicts that by the year 2020 depression will be the greatest burden of ill-health to people in the developing world.
• About 10-15 per cent of depressed people take their own lives.
• More than 7,000 people commit suicide in the UK and Ireland each year.

Famous people who suffered from depression include Vincent van Gogh, Irving Berlin, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Cole Porter, Tennessee Williams, Sir Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Michelangelo, and Charles Dickens.

Depression
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