According to a Odoxa survey*, carried out for the Danish laboratory Lundbeck, 28% of French people have suffered at least once from a depression. They are even more than a third among young people and among people with the lowest incomes. Add to this that 37% of respondents have had a loved one affected by this disease, so almost half of the French population is affected by this disease, which has been increasing steadily in recent years. The perception of depression has also changed since today, for 76% of respondents, it is indeed an illness that requires medical and psychological support. Previously, it was seen more as a state of psychological weakness that you could get out of with willpower.
A lasting psychological fragility?
The main factors leading to depressionaccording to the representative panel of the French population, are a strong work pressure (56%) and difficult management (62%). For the majority, the disease also leaves sequelae that can have consequences on the person’s work capacity. She is then considered to be psychologically fragile, able to fall back into depression, and requiring special attention. Those who are, or have been, affected by depression may therefore fear the gaze of others. The survey shows that talking about it, whether to the occupational doctor or to his colleagues, remains something taboo.
“However, underlines the psychiatrist Raphael Gaillard in a statement, depression is not the cause of a lasting handicap, it is a pathological episode and not an intrinsic state of the person. Like a broken leg, a depression is a fracture in existence, with its care and its temporality. As after a leg fracture, beyond a period of consolidation there is no reason to consider that fragility persists”.
*Survey carried out on a sample of French people interviewed online on April 4-5 and 12-13, 2018. Sample of 2,026 French people representative of the French population aged 18 and over, including 1,083 employees.
Read also :
Marriage, an effective bulwark against depression?
Go to bed early to prevent depression
