“But that does not mean that all the 300 million people would need medical intervention,” says Vikram Patel from Harvard Medical School and the Delhi-based Public Health Foundation of India. The reason: the current binary classification of depression that distinguishes people as either “well” or “sick” is fundamentally flawed. What such people need is advice on how to help themselves recover and support from friends, community-based workers or the Internet. This condition needs medical intervention — antidepressants, brief psychological treatments or both, though most of this can be provided through primary care physicians and community health workers. Following the study, all the 30 villages have a community health worker “who is trained to detect depression, provide low-intensity psychosocial interventions, and refer the patient to the public health system for further management”.

Source: The Hindu April 08, 2017 15:14 UTC