It was an intereseting toopic.

I sometimes do Online English Conversation through Skype.
Today's topic was very interesting, and not so difficult to tell what I was thinking.

Today's topic was a news,
WHO: Most People With Depression Get Poor Care or None at All

And we discussed about these three things.

1Do you find the figures presented in this article worrisome? Why or why not?

2What do you think are some signs of depression?

3Do you think that therapy alone, without any medication, can help cure depression? Why or why not?

Here in Japan "depression" as an illness is getting bigger  and serious problem.
Compared 20 years ago the word "depression" gets a common word. Probably since it became public that Crown Princess Masako has been suffering from depression brought on by a condition known as adjustment disorder.

Before that "depression" was not considered as a kind of illness.
It means ---

People who suffered depression tried to get out of the situation by themselves  --- and some of them could, some of them could endure and the others hide (or dropped from usual lives) or --- might have chose suicide "secretly". Because the families and relatives wouldn't disclose them.

Now people can "allege" that I'm suffering depression. It gets a better situation.
And some people sometimes just claim to be suffering depression. It sometimes causes a problem.

Usually women who are in their 40's or 50's tend to have a trouble of menopause disorder. I used to have. The women who have this trouble tend to get depression. 
When my mother's generation, probably they didn't know the word of menopause, and they, of course didn't take medicine. They had to struggle and fight against it by themselves.

Now, it gets easy to go to women's clinic, and -- doctors prescribe medicine for headache, too much sweat, cold body, and -- tend to prescribe anti-depressant drug.
It's not bad. Usually they work well.
On the other hand, one we start to take anti-depressant drug, it sometimes difficult to stop it even if the doctor advise them to stop it. It's addictive.

Such drugs relieve our symptoms and sometimes less our own cure ability.