Background Facts on Depression

• Approximately 10% of the population in the United States is affected.
• Depression and anxiety are the two most frequently cited reasons why people seek treatment in the United States.
• Serious depression can be a precursor to suicide.
• In the last 50 years (1950 - 2000), depression has increased 10 times in the United States (and other western countries).
• Every culture has to deal with problems associated with depression - difficulties in work, school, relationships and daily functioning.
• Cultural factors play a major role in diagnosis, expression of symptoms, causality and treatment.
• Clinical depression is rarer in societies with minimal contact with western countries.
• Symptoms of depression in non-westernized societies are expressed more often as somatic concerns, especially the head and abdomen.
• People in the Himalayas living in urban areas are more likely to be depressed than people living in rural areas.
• Of the approximately 800,000 deaths by suicide worldwide per year, 500,000 occur in the 19 countries in Asia - representing 60% of the total worldwide suicides.
• There is even a stronger stigma of mental health problems in Asian populations than in western populations - shame, disgrace, disapproval and rejection by others are all associated with having an individual or family mental health problem.
• In Asia, in general, mental illness is often blamed on supernatural forces such as spirits, ghosts and demons.
• In the Himalayas, there is little understanding of the biological causes of depression and there is a question of whether there is a lower incidence of biologically determined depression.
• In Nepal, less than 3% of the overall national budget goes to health care and only 1% of the health care budget goes to mental health care.