European Mental Health Week took place from 19 to 25 May 2025. It aims at raising awareness across Europe that mental illness is now the greatest health threat to humanity. EAAD supports this pan-European initiative organised by Mental Health Europe in many ways.
This highly recommended article is one such example – Dr. Roger Pycha, Coordinator European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) South Tyrol and director of the psychiatry service at SABES Brixen, summarised some of the most important facts surrounding depression.
One in three people will suffer from a mental disorder requiring treatment during their lifetime. However, on average, only two to three per cent of the population receives psychiatric treatment on any given day. This large difference suggests that most mental illnesses must be curable. On the other hand, it also means that many affected people suffer undiagnosed and do not seek treatment.
In fact, a large proportion of mental disorders are temporary. Those affected successfully complete psychotherapy or drug treatment and try to forget or repress what has happened. Contact with psychiatry or psychotherapists is not something that people like to talk about or include in their own life stories – our society is not yet mature enough for such openness. It is acceptable to talk about broken legs, back pain and headaches. However, anxiety disorders, depression, addiction and compulsive disorders are kept secret as much as possible. People with mental illness are still far from being treated as equal to those with physical illnesses.
Certain mental disorders are curable, but they recur throughout life: recurrent depression, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder can fragment a person's life into normal and sick phases, even if they heal again and again. They also place a heavy burden on relatives and partners, so that long-term treatment with medication is often necessary as a preventive measure. These therapies can reduce the frequency, intensity and duration of episodes of illness, but in most cases they cannot completely prevent the disorder from recurring. In such cases, living life can become a difficult struggle involving many compromises.
Some mental illnesses become chronic, just like some physical illnesses. One third of all people who develop schizophrenia remain seriously ill in the long term and require more or less intensive rehabilitation. However, a second third recover largely or completely.
Modern psychiatry and clinical psychology have developed excellent treatment approaches for mental illness. But treatment and recovery are subject to stigma: sufferers are ashamed of their illness and their therapy. We can all change this situation together by making our society more open and tolerant.
The prospects for recovery from depression are well documented scientifically. This is probably also due to the fact that, according to the World Health Organisation, depression has become the most significant of all illnesses on our planet in terms of severity and duration of impairment.
70 percent of all mild and moderate depression can be successfully treated with psychotherapy and 70 percent of all severe depression with antidepressant medication. The frequently used combination of both methods improves the chances of recovery. Sleep deprivation also has a temporary positive effect on depression in 50 percent of cases. Light therapy helps 70 percent of those affected by so-called winter depression. Electroconvulsive therapy can help half of those affected who have failed all other treatments to overcome their severe depression.
These figures and clear considerations alone are encouraging. When you also consider that in all scientific studies on the effectiveness of antidepressant measures, an average of 30 percent of the people examined also noticed an improvement in their depression when taking placebos, i.e. dummy drugs that contain no active ingredient, it becomes clear how important appropriate treatment, empathetic behaviour and the charisma of trust are in psychiatry and clinical psychology. Belief and trust in healing alone can have a very positive influence. To a large extent, those affected actually heal themselves.
Roger Pycha, director of the psychiatric clinic in Brixen, Italy. EAAD partner since 2021
