The new face of depression

The times have changed. And, with it, the causes of the siege within. In today’s New Age, work and peer pressure, and the strain of keeping up with societal yardsticks have increasingly come to be major trigger points for depression, or the Anhedonia phenomenon.
And this is amply demonstrated by the incongruity between the Rahe/Holmes Social Readjustment Rating Scale, a 1960s study which had come to be a textbook model, and the modern-day viewpoint of psychiatrists worldwide. While the Rahe/Holmes study identifies the death of a spouse as the topmost cause requiring social readjustment which, in turn, leads to depression, the same tragedy is placed low down among depression-inducing factors by today’s experts on mental health. Psychiatrists feel that the extraneous factors involved in the death of a spouse, such as an illness or accident over which his/her partner has no control, makes the tragedy relatively less painful than a divorce or break-up, in which case the individual, being directly involved emotionally, sees the occurrence as a personal failure to make the relationship work.
At another level, a dip in financial status, although listed low down on the Rahe/Holmes scale, is one of the top causes of depression today. ‘‘Compared with a few decades back, priorities have changed and, consequently, so has the balance in causes of depression,’’ says psychiatrist Samir Parikh, MD, ‘‘At the same time, in the case of a break-up or loss of a close family member, specially a child, the emotional investment is so high that such calamities will always be difficult to bear.’’
Adds psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh, MD, ‘‘With expectation levels going up and a decreasing time span to perform, depression has become widespread. Side by side, the suddenness of an incident is a vital factor in social readjustment.’’ Whatever the cause, life comes to a pause in times of depression. Sad as it sounds, the mind is not without fear... even in the new millennium.
divyavasisht@indiatimes.com