Social Class and Mental Depression - Coursework Example

Somehow developing and underdeveloped countries do not have many people who are victims of depression, perhaps due to their being engaged otherwise. There could be many factors like interpersonal relationships, emotional problems, conflicts within the family or located in the society, or there could be gender problems existing in almost all the spheres. The social class seems to be one such aspect that might encourage depression in the minds of the deprived.

Mental depression is the most common mental illness and mainly people from advanced countries are prone to it. Comparatively, developing and underdeveloped countries are not highly prone to depression, perhaps one of the causes being that people from developing countries interact with other people in the community much more than the developed countries do. Conversation and sharing the problems never fail to create a group mentality in the society and this means that people with high interaction are not very prone to depression. Lonely people, mainly city dwellers, become easy victims of depression, as depression rules loneliness. More individualistic the society becomes, people are becoming more and more introverts and urban societies are showing the strain of introverted and lonely societies. Any issues, including that of social class, usually get discussed with similar members of society, and somehow it becomes a shared burden in the rural societies. But not so with the urban community, where people tend to live like islands without discussion or complaining. Hence, many issues lead to depression and the social class and surroundings of the person are such issues.

An investigation of this kind will explain the risk factors embedded in social inequalities and how they could be mirrored in depressive symptoms and physical functioning. It is also important to know how these risk factors lift their heads to curb a person’s natural will to live and struggle to attain his goals. The study will show how the social classes affect the genders in society and how the male and female populations could lead a depressed life. It is necessary to know the male and female perspectives of social class and how their mental status could get depressed by it. It should be important to know how these depressive symptoms could be identified and measured. A general health questionnaire is sufficient for further analysis of work characteristics, material disadvantages, social support, and health behaviors. Among women, it is necessary to judge it from the physical as well as mental functioning points of view.

Depression due to social class and the social atmosphere starts at a fairly young age as early as pre-schooling days. Children might not get depressed at such an early age, but they remember those days and the accompanying deprivation in later years and these become reasons to get depressed in their adult lives. Lack of parental education due to the social class to which they belonged could be one of the main causes of depression in later years. As an adult, my childhood days are always remembered. If a person was deprived or poverty-stricken in childhood, the memory of those days can return to his mind often like a suppressed nightmare. This deprivation can become the root cause of his resentment against the society, as he would think that all his later inabilities, choice of education or lack of education or insufficient education, poor selection of employment, and further poverty have all resulted from this initial deprivation. Low parental education could be one of the causes of increased risk of depression in children at any stage of life because the child would think that the parents have made the worst possible decision about his education, which perhaps they would not have done, if only they had a better education. Social environments where either an imagined or real disadvantage is felt because of minority ethnicity or difficult background, could be the cause of real or imagined grievances and depression connected to it might not allow the person to function. It is proved that people from deprived backgrounds could suffer from depression at one point or another in life because it is inevitable not to feel the helplessness due to social class and ethnicity. This might lead to constant sorrow, loneliness, and a sense of persecution. Many people have to be hospitalized and it shows an upward trend. Still, it is a matter of curiosity to find out the definite cause of their depression. Social class is connected with depression and is of a very recent origin. Sometimes, if they are not professionally treated as early as possible, they can lead to severe mental disorders.

It is stated that social class status is usually reflected in skill discretion, work characteristics, and decision making. Even the deciding authority could differ according to the social background of the individual. Material difficulties grudge against society over denied opportunities, employment grades, and resentment against lack of upward mobility could all lead to a depressed state of mind. The most common resentment comes with the opportunity.