Prof. Dudek: Depression requires treatment

What are the conclusions of the study on the stigmatization of patients with central nervous system disorders for you as a physician? Do doctors stigmatize less?

No. Doctors do not stigmatize less. We did a sub-analysis of the responses of doctors themselves and the conclusions were quite alarming. Doctors have little knowledge about mental disorders or how patients with mental disorders function in society. So it is not that doctors stigmatize less. On the other hand, the conclusions of the entire study are positive and negative. Of course, a great many myths still persist. People still don't fully believe that medicine is able to help people in mental crisis. They don't fully believe, for example, that antidepressants work, that a patient with a mental disorder can function normally. On the other hand, however, from my more than 30 years of experience as a psychiatrist, I see a lot of progress. However, psychiatry has been disenchanted. People are beginning to see that psychiatric patients are ordinary people struggling periodically with certain problems in their lives, that they can be full members of the community and take jobs, that a mental illness or mental disorder need not be a sentence.

The survey also asked about effective treatments for depression. Respondents mentioned psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy or physical activity, among others. But as many as 51 percent of respondents felt that an effective way to combat depression was to focus on work. What do you think about this?

Depression is a serious illness, potentially fatal, that requires treatment. It's a bit like saying that an effective treatment for cancer is to focus on work. I think the key lies in the fact that people may not fully distinguish between sadness, despondency, frustration and depression. Even in everyday language, we use the word depression in the wrong context, for example, when we are sad. We say: oh today I'm depressed because I got up with my left foot, because the weather is ugly, because the boss was unkind at work, because the kids didn't pass the exam at school. And by the fact that the word depression is overused in such a colloquial context, on the one hand this is good because depression is less stigmatized, and on the other hand, patients suffering from this real depression often hear from their relatives, and even in good faith: get a grip, nowadays we all have depression, and you would take to work, it will pass you by, go to yoga or jog, or listen to music, it will pass you by. Of course, such advice can be helpful for people who have their various sorrows and frustrations. Depression, on the other hand, requires treatment. Effective treatments for depression are primarily pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, and a combination of both is ideal.