Depression as Mental Health Condition in United Kingdom

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION ASSIGNMENT
DEPRESSION AS MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION IN UNITED KINGDOM
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION ASSIGNMENT
Introduction
World Health Organisation presented a data regarding mental health condition in the year
2001 and regarding that more than 450 million people were affected with mental illness at that
time. Further the organization estimated that the rate of mental illness will increase with 18% and
by 2020, more than 80% of the world population will suffer from mental illness, leading to
establishment of mental illness as the prime reason for disability and illness throughout the world
(WHO 2018). According to Apter-Levy et al. (2013), the primary reason for widespread nature
for mental illness is because of the negligence and fear of the affected people that stop them from
seeking medical assistance. In the current world, there are several type of mental illness the
world population is suffering from, however dominance of depression cannot be challenged.
Every fourth individual in global population is suffering depression and in more than 300 million
people, it is the leading cause of disability, and global burden of disease (Hofmann et al. 2016).
Global report also determines that the dominance of depression is more among females than
males and despite of available pharmacological and psychological interventions, it is the primary
cause of suicidal tendency among people and causes more than 800,000 suicides every year. In
United Kingdom as well, depression is the leading cause of suicidal tendencies and every 20 in
100 individual confessed that they thought about suicide in their life. The rate of depression is
increasing with 2% every year and in the year 2014 19.7% of the population in the United
Kingdom was affected with depression (Richards et al. 2013). The prime purpose of this
assignment is to define the disorder, with its symptoms, diagnostic criteria and epidemiology
defining causation, prevalence, co-morbidity and prognosis. Further, the recovery and prevention
skills with interventions and treatments will be discussed. The effect of this condition on
healthcare professionals, individual service users and their families will be discussed and with

2MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION ASSIGNMENT
these, critical analysis or the clinical practice and theories related to depression will be discussed.
Finally the evidence of safe practice using recent clinical guidelines or research policies will be
mentioned.
Discussion
Depression is the mental health condition that is associated with mood swings, prevalent
feeling of sadness. In this condition, individual loses his/her interest in daily activities or
personal life, loses self-confidence, self-esteem (Dubois et al. 2014). In clinical settings, this
disorder is known as clinical depression or major depressive disorder that affects affected
individual’s thinking, feeling, behaviour and action patterns and causes a range of mental and
physical problems (Koukopoulos and Sani 2014). People also feel that their life is worthless and
therefore suicidal tendency starts overpower the willpower to live and face the difficulties of life.
The diagnostic criteria of major depressive disorder requires the presence of depression
conditions such as anhedonia, depressive moods should have a major depressive episode.
Further, the depression should have lasted more than 2 weeks, affected the individual’s
occupational, social, personal and other important relations and commitments (Dubois et al.
2014). Furthermore, the condition is uncontrollable with drugs and should not match with the
criteria of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. According to these abovementioned diagnostic
criteria, the depressive condition is rated as mild, moderate or severe and depending on that
interventions or treatments are applied on the affected individual (Koukopoulos and Sani 2014).
Signs and symptoms of depression of epression is difficult to diagnose as there may be
numerous episodes of depression throughout an individual’s life and therefore, depending on
these episodes the sign and symptoms of depression are identified (Schetter and Tanner 2012).

3MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION ASSIGNMENT
The symptoms includes feeling of sadness, hopelessness and emptiness and people feeling
worthless in their local environment. Further the person may feel disturbance in sleeping in such
a way that he or she may develop insomnia or excessive sleeping. Affected people also generate
aggressive behaviour and outburst of anger or emotions frustration, irritation related symptoms
are seen in depressive condition (Mussele et al. 2013). People feel tired, restlessness or agitation,
lack of energy while performing activities and losses interest or pleasure in normal activities
such as hobbies and sports. The body movements and behaviour of the person also gets affected
as those individuals are frequently think about finishing their life and attempts suicide frequently
as they are unable to get over their past failures or guilty feelings (Schetter and Tanner 2012).
However, these symptoms are difficult to observe as maximum depression affected people do not
seek medical assistance as they do not want to share their past history with the healthcare
professionals (Mussele et al. 2013).
Epidemiology of any disease or disorder is reviewed on the basis of its prevalence across
the culture or society, its course and socio-demographics around the world (Roy and Lloyd
2012). The epidemiology of depression can be assessed from the fact that the World Health
Organisation has named it as the fourth highest cause of disability throughout the world and
estimated that by the year 2020, it will be the second highest cause of disability in the world. The
prevalence of depression in the United Kingdom is quite higher and according to the national
statistics of UK, individuals of age 16 and above are affected with depression in higher rates than
individuals with age 40 and above. The causation of depression includes biological differences,
chemistry of brain, hormonal changes and inherited traits. According to Kessler and Bromet
(2013), people affected with depression has a subtle modified physical changes in their brains
and the neurotransmitters that helps to function the brain effects the neurocircuits that helps to