Understanding Depression and the depressed

Lecture and discussion with Manfred Wolfersdorf

According to current knowledge, up to 90% of those who died by suicide in Germany suffered from a mental illness. Two thirds of them suffer from depression, then from addiction and schizophrenic psychoses. The most important risk groups for suicide are therefore mentally ill people, then people who have already come close to suicide and suicidal acts, and people in special life and stress situations that seem unbearable, unmanageable, unbearable. Suicide prevention today therefore encompasses two broad approaches. A mental health approach (identify at-risk groups, treat, prevent) and a public health approach (limit access to methods, relax media reports, prevent models).

Suicide prevention today is a clear mandate to psychiatry and psychotherapy as well as all those working in the psychosocial field under the question "Who needs, who wants help?" and also a social mandate to prevent a suicidal and depressive hopeless mood and to reduce access to methods. After all, "Nobody likes to kill themselves!".

Prof. Dr. med. Dr. h. c. Manfred Wolfersdorf is one of the leading specialists on depression and a physician for psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychosomatics.

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