Wednesday 31 July 2013

East/West split for Depression and Anxiety

I've been an avid follower of PostSecret, which incidentally you should definitely have a gander at, for many years and so I follow the account on all-powerful twitter.
PostSecret invites anyone to send in their secret anonymously on the back of a postcard. Once a week a page of about 20 secrets is posted onto the internet, with secrets ranging from beautiful to frightening, saddening to funny.
ANYWAY
To bring me onto my point
The PostSecret twitter account recently tweeted a link to this article which details a study showing that Anxiety is more common in the western world, with Depression more prevalent in the East.
Obviously I clicked on it, I can't control myself when I see a title as interesting sounding as that. And I was really intrigued by the findings, especially seeing as the surveys done to reach the conclusion seemed incredibly extensive, with over 480,000 people taking part. (Not like those cosmetics adverts you see that boast 94% success rate and then tell you they only tested 30 people) What was probably most interesting was that the leaders of the research were very quick to point out the difficulties in gathering data relating to mental health, and stressing the point that, actually, we shouldn't jump to conclusions about what the study really shows. People still, no matter where they are in the world or what their cultural or situational circumstances, don't always give honest and reliable responses when asked about their mental health.
Tricky one.
Check PostSecret out, and come back to me, I miss you when you're gone.

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