The misconception that depression isn’t a big deal in Egypt passes on ceaselessly between the common minds of Egyptians. This phenomenon is nothing more than a mere testimony to the failure of reporting most depression cases, unfortunately, due to the careless, ridiculing and labeling nature of our health system, that most of the time, doesn’t even pay attention to nor acknowledge “minor” mental illnesses. Nevertheless, it’s not under wraps that depression is an overwhelmingly common disorder amongst Egyptians. Why is that?
Poverty
This lies at the top of our list. It’s the one thing about Egypt that is indisputably prevalent, and we all know poverty is congruent with depression. This occurs as a result of a long process, or “cycle”, if you may, that puts the poverty-stricken individual in a position where he’s rendered incapable all the time. One of the theories backing this belief is that of Learned Helplessness, which is, in simple terms, “when you put a dog in a cage after a while he stops trying to unlock it”.
Abuse
At some point, I had started getting the feeling that Egypt was the city of abuse; where abuse is completely socially acceptable, if not reinforced, almost everywhere, all the time. Parents are convinced that the only right way to their child’s upbringing is beating the hell out of them/smothering them with frustration and undermining, in order to achieve the perfect son/daughter they’ve always dreamt of. Abuse occurs to wives from their husbands, to workers from their bosses, to people on the street from authority figures. And we’ve gone so far to indulging it into our norms that we don’t even notice it anymore, let alone that it can have detrimental effects such as depression.
Ignorance
How often do you, as a person, find yourself unable to answer a question or draw conclusions to an idea when you desperately need to? Now multiply that feeling by 27,000,000 Egyptians, because that’s exactly the illiteracy rate we’ve got here. Ignorance to specific facts and ideas has been proven to induce depression in individuals. Not to forget its pivotal contribution in the ongoing prevalence of other physical diseases, which are naturally accompanied by depression as a side effect.
It doesn’t stop there, but that pretty much outlines it. There you have it; abuse, poverty and ignorance, the hierarchy for a paradigm of mass depression in a country that doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of such ailment.
