DEPRESSION AND ANXIETYbecause depression is known to run in families. Among identical twins,
for example, if one of the pair has depression, there’s a fifty percent
chance that the other twin will too.
Depression has also been shown to snowball through the generations.
A study led by Myrna Weissman at Columbia University, published in
2005, focused on 47 people recruited in 1982 and continued with their
children and grandchildren. The researchers were looking for signs
of childhood anxiety in the grandchildren, because it is known to be
a precursor of depression later in life. Among the 161 grandchildren,
those with a parent and a grandparent who had suffered depression were
five times more likely to experience anxiety than grandchildren with a
depressed grandparent, but not a depressed parent.
Suicide
Somewhere in the world a person kills themselves every forty seconds.
That’s according to the World Health Organization, which also warns that
suicide rates have increased by sixty percent worldwide over the last 45
years. Perhaps the most shocking statistic is that among young people,
suicide is the second leading cause of death after traffic accidents.
Depression is obviously a major risk factor for suicide. Less expected
is the extraordinarily high suicide-rate among people with an eating
disorder – fifty to sixty times higher than in the “general population”.
Why might this be? Experts don’t know for certain, but one possible
reason could be that people with eating disorders are more used to
pain and discomfort. This might make it easier for them to overcome
the deterrents to self-annihilation that lead many people to pull back
from the brink. After all, suicide requires not just the motivation to
end one’s life, but also the ability to carry out the fatal act. Research
shows that people who are used to pain and violence, such as soldiers,
and those who have ready access to the means of killing themselves,
including doctors and farmers, are also at greater risk of suicide.
Other clues as to the difference between those who think about
suicide and the minority who actually kill themselves were suggested
by a huge community survey carried out by Kate Fairweather at
the Australian National University. She and her team identified 522
people who said they had thought about killing themselves during
the previous year. The ten percent of this subgroup who had also
actually made a suicide attempt were more likely to suffer from serious
ill-health, be unemployed and have poor relationships with friends and
family than those who didn’t act on their suicidal thoughts. However,
rates of depression or anxiety were actually no greater among the
suicide attempters than among the contemplators of suicide.