Victims of depression must endure ignorant and shortsighted mindset

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.