Archive Report
Archive Report
Wide affliction of mental depression
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,” wrote the poet a century ago of the autumnal season.1 But some today would say that all the days are melancholy now in this eighth decade of the 20th century. For depression is coming to be regarded as the characteristic personal affliction of our time. Depression, according to a National Institute of Mental Health report, has become “a household word on the contemporary American scene.”2 And a research team studying the so-called “affective [emotional] disorders” observed that “A variety of problems that may be manifestations of depression—melancholy, withdrawal, lethargy, self-blame and self-harm, some physical symptoms—are among the most common complaints brought to the offices of psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians in ...