Modernisation leading to DEPRESSION !

If the 20th century ushered in the Age of Anxiety, its exit is witnessing the dawn of

the Age of Melancholy. The first international study of major depression reveals a steady rise in the disorder worldwide.

In nations as diverse as Taiwan, Lebanon and New Zealand each successive generation is growing more vulnerable to the malady. Although rates of depression rise with age, the study found increases among young people. In some countries the likelihood that people born after 1955 will suffer a major depression -- not just sadness, but a paralyzing listlessness, dejection and self-deprecation, as well as an overwhelming sense of hopelessness -- at some point in life is more than three times greater than for their grandparents' generation.

The experts acknowledge that some of the increase may be due to greater willingness to discuss mental illness or more efficient reporting methods. But they say these factors do not come close to explaining the entire increase. They can only speculate about why one price of modernity should be the spread of melancholy. Competing explanations range from a loss of beliefs in God or an afterlife that can buffer people against life's setbacks, to the stresses of industrialization, to the distress created in women by the spread of unattainable ideals of female beauty, to exposure to toxic substances.

The search for an explanation is rendered more difficult by the lack of any universally agreed on cause for major depression. Indeed, there is unlikely to be any single cause.

Not all the news about depression is bad. "The good news is that research and treatments are keeping up with the problem"For adults, the overall effectiveness of antidepressants is 80 percent or greater, with the right combination of medications.