Depression in India is nearly as prevalent as diabetes

A staggering 50 million (5 crore) people in India suffer from depression, points out a report released by the World Health Organization. To understand the severity of the problem, India has about 64.5 million (6.5 crore) people with diabetes. The numbers indicate that depression is nearly as common a health issue as diabetes in the country.

World Health Organization recently released a report on the global health estimates of depression and other common mental disorders recently. According to the report, about 322 million people suffer from depression across the world, of which a major chunk of population is based in South-East Asian countries, including India.

According to PTI, the WHO figures report the total number of cases in India were about 56 million which was 4.5 per cent of population in 2015 while total cases of anxiety disorders were around 38 million, which was 3 per cent of the population in the same year period. Depression was most seen in persons aged 55-74 and was prevalent in 7.5% females and 5.5% males. It was comparatively lower for adolescents below 15 years of age.

PTI stated that for depressive disorders, WHO said total Years Lived with Disability (YLD) in India was 1,00,504,11 which was 7.1 per cent of total YLD, for anxiety disorders, total years for YLD was 35,19,527 which was 2.5 per cent of total YLD.

Depression is also the major contributor to suicide deaths, which number close to 800 000 per year. WHO report stated suicide is one of the leading causes of deaths worldwide in 2015, as it accounted for about 1.5 per cent of all deaths.