In a shocking revelation a research study has claimed that about four lakh adults in Uttarakhand are depressed and they do not have access to the recommended first line of treatment of talking therapy (counselling).
Informing about the outcome of the research work co-author of the report and Project director of organisation ‘Burans’ Karrren Mathias told newsmen here on Thursday that the cross-sectional study surveyed 960 randomly selected people in Dehradun district and studied the prevalence of depression, and access to care. “Using a depression assessment tool the study found that six percent were depressed. Furthermore nearly 10 percent of those studied had experienced an episode of sadness for two weeks or longer in the last 12 months. When these findings are applied to the 60 lakh adult population of Uttarakhand we can estimate over 4 lakh people are living with the depression and the majority have no access to care,” she stated. The study found that the risk of depression was around three times higher for people who were unschooled, living in kaccha houses, who had taken a loan recently or who were Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) or Other Backward Castes (OBC).
Director of organisation ‘AKS- Hope’ and co author of the study, lawrence Singh said that it was shocking that people who had depression had no counselling or talking therapy. “Not all depressed people need medication; it’s a huge loss that only 3.4 Percent of those who were depressed had been prescribed medicine. It seems that while depressed people are attending clinics, the doctors are not recognizing and treating depression,” he claimed.
In response to a question, Singh said that his organization is planning to launch a help line for the patients of depression. He claimed that the Hope and Burans have started counselling sessions for 350 people in Dehradun and the results are very encouraging.
The study was undertaken by Burans, a partnership project between the Uttarakhand Community Health and Global Network) and the Emmanuel Hospital Association. The project was started in June 2014 to work with communities in Uttarakhand for mental health at Sahaspur, Mussoorie and Majra in Dehradun district.