Campaign answers questions about depression, mental health

A so-called Green Ribbon mental health promotion campaign was kicked off in Beijing on Saturday. Coinciding with World Mental Health Day, the campaign is supported by Lundbeck China, a unit of the Denmark-based international pharmaceutical company.

The campaign, jointly initiated by the People's Daily Health app and Health Times, and co-organized by JD Health, invited Lu Lin, academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Peking University No 6 Hospital, and Yang Fude, Party secretary of Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, to answer netizens' questions on how to maintain mental health while preventing COVID-19.

According to Lu, an online survey conducted by the national clinical research center for mental diseases on more than 50,000 people showed the incidence of depression, anxiety, insomnia and acute stress symptoms in the general population during the epidemic was about 30 percent, and the mental health of frontline workers, patients with chronic diseases and other special groups is even more at risk.

As for depression, a WHO report showed more than 54 million people in China are suffering from depression, accounting for 4.2 percent of the total population.

According to Yang, depression is a typical condition of depressive disorder that involves three main types of symptoms -- emotional, physical and cognitive symptoms.

The first type are core symptoms and include things like a low mood, lack of motivation and loss of interest. Physical symptoms include insomnia, headaches, tachycardia, and poor appetite. Cognitive symptoms include lack of attention, decreased ability in execution and worsened memory.

"If these symptoms persist for more than 2 weeks, you should be alert to the possibility of having depression. If your work, study and life are affected to varying degrees, you should immediately go to the outpatient area of a specialist hospital or general hospital for diagnosis and treatment," he said.

The disease is treatable with effective intervention, and the ultimate treatment goal of depression is not only to eliminate symptoms and avoid recurrence, but also to enable patients to achieve full functional recovery and return to normal life.

During the treatment process medications are needed, but care and companionship are even more important, Lu added.