Depression is a painful mental health disease that can prevent people from participating in daily life. However, admitting to mental depression is still stigmatized even in places like West Virginia and its surrounding Appalachian states where the disease is most concentrated; asking for help is one of the biggest problems, Phil Galewitz of KFF Health News reports. “An estimated 32% of adults in Logan County, W.Va., have been diagnosed with depression — the highest rate in the United States and nearly double the national rate, according to a report released in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The study, which provided estimates by county based on a national survey of nearly 400,000 people conducted in 2020, “showed depression rates varied widely by region and even within states,” Galewitz writes. Almost all the counties with the highest rates were Appalachia. . . . “West Virginia, which also has some of the nation’s highest rates of poverty and poor health, is home to eight of the 10 counties with the highest estimated rates of adult depression, the CDC survey found.”

Depression is an insidious disease. “It’s a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and a loss of interest in things once enjoyed. It affects eating, sleeping, concentrating, and activities such as working or going to school.” Mark Miller, a psychiatry professor at West Virginia University, told Galewitz, “Depression is often a chronic illness, and if you stop treatment, it eventually comes back.” Galewitz adds, “He said his state’s combination of poor overall health, low education levels, and poverty — as well as the opioid epidemic, which has hit West Virginia particularly hard — takes a punishing toll on residents’ mental health.”

“In Logan County, nearly a quarter of whose 31,000 residents live in poverty, few expressed surprise when told their home tops the list of most depressed counties,” Galewitz adds. And yet, medical professionals in Logan County are not busy giving mental health referrals or treatment. “Robert Perez, an internist in Logan, estimates more than half of his patients have depression. But he said few want to talk about it or accept a referral to a psychiatrist, and he is limited in what he can do for them.” Perez told Galewitz, “It’s hard to convince people who don’t want to be helped. I don’t have that much time to treat their depression.”

Read the full article about mental health in rural areas by Heather Close at The Rural Blog.