Family physicians see depression in five percent of their office practice and twenty percent of their nursing home patients. The first year in the nursing home is a time of high incidence of depression. Only about ten percent of the elderly who need treatment for mental disorders get it. The chances in a lifetime of having a depression are about fifteen percent and only a quarter get properly treated. Society has stigmatized mental illness for so long that people with depression, and sometimes their families, feel ashamed.
Depression often requires treatment.
Control studies show that modern anti-depressive medicines work. A depressed person has an all pervasive feeling of sadness. There are feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy, and incompetence which hound the patient daily. They can't think normally and they don't calculate correctly. Depressed persons isolate themselves by withdrawing from friends and families.