Fidel Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart was found on Thursday morning and is said to have suffered from depression.

The first-born son of the late president was nicknamed “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of the family resemblance.

He was a nuclear physicist, trained by the former Soviet Union.

“Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, who had been treated by a group of doctors for several months due to deep depression, took his life this morning,” Cuba’s official newspaper Granma reported.

State television said he had been receiving medical treatment as an outpatient in recent months, following a hospital stay.

At the time of his death, he was a scientific adviser for the Cuban Council of State and he served as vice president of Cuba’s Academy of Sciences.

He headed the island’s nuclear programme from 1980 to 1992, before it was suspended after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Castro Díaz-Balart was born during his father’s brief first marriage to Mirta Díaz-Balart, the daughter of a prominent pre-revolution politician.

His maternal family went on to become prominent figures in the anti-Castro community in Florida. His cousin Mario Díaz-Balart is a US congressman.

The television announcement said his funeral would be planned by his family, but no further details were given.

His father, Fidel Castro, a revolutionary figure and one of the world’s longest serving political leaders, died at 90 in 2016.

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Source: BBC

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Dr Owen Kaluwa, Country Representative of WHO, who revealed this at launch of this year’s World Health Day in Accra on Friday, said depression affected people of all ages, from all walks of life and in all countries.

He also said depression currently affected close to 30 million people from the African Region, meaning that everyone was at risk, due to the numerous negative circumstances that people faced daily in their lives, which makes them sad and miserable from time to time.

New estimates of depression, he said, show an increase by 18.4 per cent between 2005 and 2015, with more than 80 percent of the affected, living in low and middle-income countries, he said.

[contextly_sidebar id=”N5dp0rgTKRpBcACUsTC1wV5NWiA6HsqG”]The celebrations, which was jointly organised by the Ministry of Health and the Mental Health Authority in collaboration with the WHO focused on the topic: “Depression-Let’s Talk”, and aimed at drawing attention to the global burden of the common mental health disorder, with the objective of ensuring that more people with depression in all countries seek and get help.

The Day also offered an opportunity to encourage governments and civil society around the world to address the problem as a widespread illness that affected individuals, their families and their peers, and to recognize that it was a treatable condition.

Dr Kaluwa said despite the seriousness of the situation, resources to prevent, identify and treat mental health problems such as depression were scarce, saying the Africa Region as a whole and Ghana particularly, was faced with a critical shortage of qualified professionals, with the current ratio being just one psychiatrist per 1.5 million people and a similar number of psychologists.

He said the Mental Health workforce of the psychiatric nurses; occupational therapists and social workers were woefully inadequate, notwithstanding the worrying challenges of unavailability of psychotropic medicines, proper information with well-structured psychotherapy and other effective measures for primary health care services to treat depression.

The WHO he said, had published guidelines to help countries to increase and improve healthcare services for people with mental health disorders through care provided by health workers who were not specialists in that field.

These he said include the mental health Global Action Programme and interventions guide, and the Global Mental Health Action Plan (2013-2020); saying with proper care, psychosocial assistance and medication, millions of people in the Region with depression could begin to lead normal lives, even where resources were scarce.

Dr Kaluwa further called for stronger collaboration among governments, health partners and civil society to bring depression out of the shadows in the Region, and urged the Ministry of Health to support mental health programmes by allocating adequate human and financial resources to respond to the growing burden.

He cited interventions such as school-based programmes to provide counseling and support to persons with the condition and the development of community-based services to address stigma and other forms of discriminations against affected persons.

Dr Joseph B. Asare, who was the Former Chairman of the Ghana Mental Health Authority, in a presentation on the theme, said depression was a socio-moral challenge which affected people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all countries, and was a widespread illnesses, with the causative factors including poverty, unemployment, loss of loved ones and lack of self-esteem.

The condition he said could be looked at as a common mental illness characterized by persistent sadness and a loss of interest in activities that the accepted persons normally enjoyed, accompanied by an inability to carry out daily activities, for at least two weeks, and must be treated with urgency from the very early stages of human development, particularly among children.

He explained that people with clinical depression would have symptoms such as sad or irritable mood that does not go away, loss of enjoyment and interest in activities that used to be enjoyable, lack of energy and tiredness, feeling worthless or guilty about nothing, loss of appetite or eating too much, sleeping difficulties, thinking about death and difficulty in concentrating or making decisions.

The situation, he said was becoming more worrying as statistics kept rising, adding that, stigma and fear of social isolation were the major barriers to seeking help, and called for urgent for support, to prevent and treat those affected, saying the condition could lead to devastating consequences including suicide.

Dr Asare said depression could be prevented through the provision of adequate public knowledge, proper parenting, encouraging good interpersonal relationship, ensuring good mental health practices such as assertiveness, self-identity and acceptance and regular exercise.

He urged the public to be alert of the early signs of depressive disorders and report for treatment.

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Source: GNA

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Coincidentally this year, the World Health Day theme is “Depression: Let’s talk”. April 7 is celebrated as World Health Day to mark the founding of WHO – a specialised UN agency concerned with international public health. For sixty-seven years the WHO has celebrated World Health Day, focusing on various health issues.

Depression is a common mental disorder that presents one with depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, decreased energy, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, and poor concentration. Depression affects more than 300 million people of all ages; it’s the leading cause of disability worldwide, and a major contributor to the overall global burden of diseases; more women are affected by depression than men; at its worst depression can lead to suicide; and, there’re effective treatments for depression.

It’s the above mental conditions that bring about suicide. In fact, the WHO states the following facts about suicide: close to 800000 people die due to suicide every year; for every suicide there’re many more people who attempt suicide every year and that, a prior suicide attempt is the single most important risk factor for suicide in the general population; suicide was the second leading cause of death among the age range of 15 and 29 in 2015; and, 78% of global suicides occur in low-and middle-income countries.

In Ghana, media reports on suicide are alarming. The Daily Graphic (September 15, 2015 edition) reported that Ghana records 1,500 suicide cases annually and this is caused by depression. This was revealed by Dr. Akwasi Osei, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Mental Health Authority (MHA). Dr. Osei added: “in every single reported case of suicide there were four unreported cases and this brings the number of unreported cases to about 6,000 annually”.

The WHO (2012) also states that globally, for every person who completes a suicide 20 or more may attempt to end his or her life.

Beyond the medical view that suicide is a public health problem, Emile Durkheim a founding French Sociologist in his view stated suicide occurs as a consequence of decrease in social integration. Durkheim categorised suicide in four ways: anomic, altruistic, egoistic and fatalistic. In each of the categorisations, Durkheim views the causal factor of suicide to be the break in relationship between an individual and his immediate environment and vice versa.

Depression can be experienced in multiple ways: depressive episode and bipolar affective disorders. Depressive episode involves a depressed mood, loss of interest and enjoyment, and increased fatigability; whereas, bipolar affective disorder typically consists of both manic and depressive episodes separated by periods of normal mood.

Although depression is treatable, WHO states that there’re various barriers to the treatment of depression: lack of resources, lack of trained health-care providers, social stigma associated with disorders and inaccurate assessment resulting in a misdiagnosis.

In Ghana, the absence of a national policy on suicide prevention is one of the greatest challenges, coupled with lack of political will and commitment to empower the MHA and negligence of counseling and guidance centres in schools and communities.

The media has also come under attack for how it has reported suicide incidents. Media organisations must set standards for their reporters on reporting of public health issues such as depression and its accompanied consequences.

All said and done, depression causes suicide; let’s deal with depression – depression is a global crisis that must attract attention of all. This effort gives us control of the spate of the dire consequences of depression – suicide, now and in the future. Also, there’s an urgent need for designing and implementing a national policy on suicide prevention at all levels of our national and communal lives.

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By: Alex Blege

The writer is a freelance journalist.

[email protected]/[email protected]

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