Assignment 2

Annotated Quantitative Research

Patel, V. (2017). Talking sensibly about depression. PLOS Med 14(4): e1002257.

doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002257.

Patel’s journal depicts how depression has been handled by the WHO since it was noted to be a problem. According to Patel’s research, 2017 had been a momentous year for global mental health. Patel was interested to find out if depression was an issue. Depression had been the focus of the 2017 World Health Day following the great burden it had brought to the globe since more than 800 million people are reported to have depression. He followed up with the World Health Organization through frequent checks of their websites to find out their updates on dealing with depression. Later, that year, The WHO and The World Bank jointly hosted the “Out of the Shadows” summit in Washington on April 2016 to highlight that mental health was a priority to ensure global development. They emphasized that mental health was broadly affecting the development of nations more than it was to the health sector. A year later he broadened his findings from the report of the WHO celebration of World Health Day in April 2017 where the central theme was depression. That is because, despite the presence of many ways of dealing with depression, many people in the world were still non-beneficiaries to these interventions. China and India, for instance, was mentioned among those who were middle-income countries yet 90% of patients were still suffering from depression.

The World Health came up with a slogan “let’s talk” to encourage people to talk about their issues which later translated to gradual recovery. Following the stigma one experienced when mentally ill, The WHO recommended family members, friends, health professionals and even learning institutions to lend these people their ears so that they can talk about their issues without being judged. The WHO campaigns also emphasized building discussion platforms through the social media, workplaces, and schools to boost the number of depressed people seeking for help. The Government and healthcare systems were also challenged to take part in this initiative. In his research, he concluded that the WHO campaigns had motivated various campaigns, e.g., the let’s talk campaign to fight against depression which is an actual problem in today’s study.

The main strength of his research was that he was using a reliable source of information that came from the World Health Organization directly. He gathered information from WHO’s weekly reports to identify the initiatives they were taking to eradicate depression. He also used their website to find out about the dates and venues of the events WHO organized to help in this initiative. The research was well framed because it covered the issue that Patel was dealing. He needed to know if there was something that WHO was doing to eliminate that problem which he did because he found out that there was something indeed that they were doing. The research method, according to my evaluation, was not efficient. That is because he mainly got his information from secondary sources such as reports and other people’s findings thus the information gotten might have been inaccurate. I believe that Patel’s conclusion is a valid one because, after numerous campaigns done by WHO, there have been reduced cases of depression and many people can air their desires and issues with family and friends. One of the limitations of this research is that it is not specific as to which specific countries WHO is focusing on, it also does not account for those people who are undergoing depression, yet they don’t seek for help.

This source of information was reasonably helpful to me as a reader since it helped me identify some of the campaign goals of the WHO, the reason behind the World Health Day of 2017 and to what extent the depression problem has affected the world. This information is useful because I can prove my argument and say that indeed depression is a problem that has progressively been rising over the years following the high number of suicidal cases and withdrawal by some people. I can now use this source of data to describe the role of the World Health Organization in managing and elimination of depression among people. Despite the WHO efforts, I still think that depression is a global problem that needs to be solved but for it to be successful people should also be willing and bold to be helped.

References:

Patel, V. (2017). Talking sensibly about depression. PLOS Med 14(4): e1002257.

doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002257.

Lam, R. W. (2018) Depression.

Talking Sensibly about Depression. (2017, April) Retrieved from

https//journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article? id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002257