Can depression lead to violence and crime? One study seems to suggest that.
In one of the latest studies from a team of researchers of Oxford University, depression can lead to more than 30,000 crimes in Britain, especially sexual assault, robbery, and murder. They also found that those who suffer from the disorder are 3 times more likely to be violent than those who don't have it.
As to how they're able to come up with such analysis, they interviewed and checked medical information of over 45,000 Swedish men and women who have been diagnosed with depression. They then compared this data with those of the general population.
Even if the results have been adjusted to previous violence history, substance abuse, and socioeconomic status, the risk still remains three-fold.
For the researchers, the study is significant since the connection of depression and violent crimes are hardly talked about. Moreover, many people still remain undiagnosed.
They hope that doctors and psychiatrists would also assess a person's violent tendencies toward others apart from their suicidal thoughts.
Treatments for patients should also be closely monitored and continued until all the symptoms have disappeared or controlled as a way of protecting the public.
Other health experts, however, do not side with the report. For one, they believe that this only adds to the stigma that comes with being diagnosed with the disease. Many believe they are suffering from depression but prefer to remain untreated than to live with the embarrassment of having the disease.
Another cited that people with clinical depression are usually not harmful to others but also to themselves as evidenced by their thoughts of suicide and other types of self-harm. This may also robbed the patients the compassion that should be provided to them to help them heal.
A neuroscience emeritus professor of Cambridge University, Joe Herbert, sees a mistake in the method in that it focused more on people who have severe case of depression and ignoring those who were already being treated by their GPs.
