Victims of depression must endure ignorant and shortsighted mindset

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

YOUR report, shockingly headlined ‘33% wouldn’t want a depressed person as a friend’ (October 9), was a sad indictment on the ignorant and shortsighted mindset of many people in this country.

I’m surprised that a survey this year by St Patrick’s University Hospital in Dublin could reveal that so many people are unenlightened about such a sensitive and widespread illness.

Ignorant because of remarks about how those suffering from mental health problems are of "below average intelligence", how they wouldn’t "willingly" accept a depressed or mentally ill person as a close friend and that it was acceptable to discriminate against such people in employment because they might be "unreliable". What is behind such grotesque insensitivity is hard to explain. In addition, this thinking is shortsighted because a raft of evidence in recent years shows that depression and mental illness are liable to affect at least one in five people at some stage in their adult lives.

In addition, studies show an increase in the incidence of depression and mental illness among children and adolescents. Therefore, a majority of the very people so insensitively dismissing sufferers of mental illness are themselves more than likely to experience either first hand or through a relative or loved one the debilitating effects of depression. In relation to the bizarre, "below average intelligence" assertion I would argue that the majority of those suffering with a depressive illness are indeed more than likely to be of average or above average intelligence.

One can only hope, like in so many matters we have been ignorant about, that time will bring enlightenment on the delicate issue of mental health.

David Marlborough
Kenilworth Park
Dublin 6w

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, October 14, 2009