According to a Odoxa survey*, carried out for the Danish laboratory Lundbeck, 28% of French people have suffered at least once from depression. They are even more than a third among young people and among people with the lowest incomes. Add to this that 37% of those questioned had a loved one affected by this disease, so nearly half of the French population is affected by this disease, which has been on the rise in recent years. The perception of depression has also changed a lot 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 one could get out of with willpower.
A lasting psychological fragility?
The main ones factors leading to depression, according to the representative panel of the French population, are a strong pressure at work (56%) and difficult management (62%). For the majority, the disease leaves moreover sequelae that can have consequences on the person’s working capacities. It is then considered to be psychologically fragile, being able to fall back into depression, and requiring special attention. Those who are, or have been, affected by depression may therefore fear the eyes of others. The survey shows that talking about it, whether it is 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.
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