What's behind the violence and addiction

Specialists say they can only be manifestations of a depressive state. Why depression is a "social epidemic" and how they treat traditional medicine and alternative therapies.


The newspaper now faces Argentines to different manifestations of violence: at home, in the street, at school, at work. Physical or verbal abuse, was found in almost all activities of daily life. In some cases, an underlying addictive behavior, and not just drugs or alcohol. For example, the mistreatment of employees of a superior workaholic.
However, both violence and addiction can only be a manifestation of much deeper psychological picture: depression. "Indeed, not only depression symptoms manifest themselves known by almost everyone: insomnia, sadness, eating disorders, hopelessness, and so on. In what is called 'masked depression' classic manifestations are absent and irritable people may occur, violent, with addictive tendencies. What often underlies depression is a picture that is not presented in a 'classic' "he said to Hugo Infobae.com Lerner, vice president of the Foundation for the Study of Depression (Fundep).

Then there would be a not so forced relationship between violence, addiction and depressive. This would say that a person suffering from depression is not isolated from its surroundings, as popular belief would indicate, and even has a direct influence on it. "Unable to think about depression as an entity away from the socio-historical context," said categorically the specialist, and called for understanding "most comprehensive human suffering, which exceeds the biochemical and biological explanations.

For Lerner, the depression is then a "social epidemic", which runs at a rapid pace in Argentina and the world and is in intimate connection with everything around it. That is why the obstacles facing the construction of the identity of the "subject argentino" when trying to implement projects to achieve equilibrium play a central role when a fall or no depressive symptoms.

"For a huge majority, Argentina has become a major area of quicksand, with no firm ground to support it. For someone to be integrated into their environment and become subject, must have a stable and predictable. If the surrounding social environment is fluid, unstable and unpredictable it is unthinkable that a person can become a free subject of changes in self-esteem, "explained the expert.

He added: "We should only look at the convulsions that have gone through and probably find other significant correlations between increasing demand for clinical depression, subjects apathetic, hopeless and a society with social crises, lack of credibility in political leadership, violence, unemployment, feelings of social dislocation, inability of many subjects to imagine a future, assembling a project. "

"Depression, subjects hopeless, apathetic, sad they have been mounted to stay for unpredictable weather," Lerner concluded.