“Twenty-two percent of children and adolescents in Spain suffer from mental disorders of some kind,” reports Spain’s newspaper ABC. “The most common are behavior disorders, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders,” states child psychiatrist María Jesús Mardomingo. During the past 30 years, specialists have observed a marked increase in the number of these cases, leading them to the conclusion that emotional problems often accompany economic progress. They note, for example, dramatic changes in social and cultural values, including a significant decline in parental authority. “Although we know that inflexibility and authoritarianism are destructive,” states Mardomingo, “there is a need to combine love with authority.”
“In the workplace . . . anxiety, burnout and depression are
spiralling out of control,” reports The Guardian of London.
According to the UN’s International Labour Organisation, up
to 3 out of every 10 employees in the United Kingdom are experiencing
mental-health problems, and 1 in 10 workers in the United States reportedly
suffers from clinical depression. Nearly 7 percent of early retirements
in Germany are due to depression. Over half of Finland’s work
force suffers from stress-related symptoms. In Poland, anxiety resulting
from soaring unemployment rates increased by 50 percent in 1999, while
suicides also rose. The report predicts that with the continued shift
to new technologies and management methods in the workplace, depression
will grow dramatically. And it warns that “by 2020, stress and
mental disorders will overtake road accidents, Aids and violence as
the primary cause of lost working time.”
“Despite impressive medical advances in many aspects of health care,” notes an article published in Synergy, a newsletter of the Canadian Society for International Health, “we face a stark global scenario for mental health.”
One report concluded that 1 out of 4 people worldwide suffers from mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. Another study indicated that 1 out of 3 patients seeing a health worker does so because of suffering from depression or anxiety problems. And those numbers, say researchers, are increasing.
Why? A study conducted by Harvard University’s Department of Social Medicine notes that such illnesses as clinical depression, schizophrenia, and dementia are multiplying because “more people live to the age of risk.” However, living longer is not the only reason. Economic problems are also to blame, as is the increased stress of modern living.
How can this gloomy picture be changed? Amid the many aspects of
health care, say experts, mental health should be given priority because
it “represents one of the last frontiers in the improvement
of the human condition.”