In between more or less, mostly less, good German media reporting on Greece, tucked away between summer reading suggestions and beach booze recipes, there was another article about the ravages of mental health problems in modern Germany.
Maybe our regional paper needed a filler? Maybe the editors believed they stood no chance trying to explain to us hillbillies the intricacies of the hacking of Italian "lawful surveillance software" company Hacking Team?
The article text is unremarkable, it brings up the common themes of high demands on workers, it provides indications that well compensated workers have lower rates of depression. One medical expert warns that a point of over diagnosing of depression has been reached because doctors might be tempted to assign the label of depression to collections of unclear symptoms.
In any case, they wrote a piece on depression in Germany and had a bar chart showing rates by state.
The chart is absolutely striking. The states with the highest percentage of diagnosed cases of depression are the wealthiest German states. The two southern economic powerhouses Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg take spots 1 and 4, with Berlin and Hamburg as numbers two and three. Other than Berlin, which consists of the former East German and the former West German parts and has the typical high concentration of f***d up power-amped government types of a national capital, these states belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) before re-unification after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The final four states in the chart are four of the total of five states that make up the former country of East German. The fifth state, Saxony, is at number six from the bottom, with one formerly West German outlier on number five.
The article fails to mention this line-up, leaving readers to speculate what the reasons could be. A quarter of a century after re-unification, the former East German regions are still not as wealthy as the old West German states and have higher unemployment rates, but can this help explain the chart?
Is life in the richer West more stressful? Does more anxiety exist there after they lost much of the social safety net comforts West Germany was known for? Are doctors in the old West quicker to diagnose depression?
All the article tells us is that the group of people between the ages of 25 and 40 has seen a steep increase in depression rates, which just might be a sign that work or social pressure in general may be a contributing factor.
We will keep and eye on future reports to see if there is continuity in this startling difference.
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