DEPRESSION - AN AYURVEDIC OUTLOOK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70066/jahm.v5i2.331Keywords:
Depression, Ayurveda, Mind, Vishada, UnmadaAbstract
Depression is a serious mental health concern that will touch most people’s life directly or indirectly, affecting 350 million
people worldwide. It can affect a person's ability to work, form of relationships, and destroy their quality of life. At its
most, severe depression can lead to suicide. It remains as a social stigma in terms of prevalence and suffering, dysfunction,
morbidity and economic burden. 80% of depressed people are not currently having any treatment. Depression is mentioned
in ayurvedic classics in various scattered references. It is both a state of emotion (manasika bhava) as well as a disease
(manasika vyadhi). Previous scholars have tried to correlate the clinical condition with vishada, avasada, manodhukhaja
unmada and kaphaja unmada. Psychopathology of depression may even extend up to somatic level. As there are multiple
correlations, understanding the pathology of depression by means of ayurvedic basic principles such as sharirika dosha
(bodily humor), manasika dosha (attributes of psyche), satwa bala (strength of mind), jnanendriya (sense organs),
karmendriya (motor organs), agni (biological fire), dhathu (tissues sustaining the body), srotos (channels or pathways of
the body) and ojus (vital essence of life) is essential. A better understanding of depression can help in effective prevention
and treatment and will help reduce the stigma associated with the condition, and lead to more people seeking help.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 ARCHANA MADHAVI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain the copyright of their work and grant the Journal of Ayurveda and Holistic Medicine (JAHM) the right of first publication. All published articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license, which permits non-commercial sharing, use, distribution, and adaptation with proper attribution and the same license terms.
JAHM ensures free, irrevocable, worldwide access to its content. Users may copy, distribute, display, and share published works for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit to the author(s) and the journal. Limited printed copies for personal, non-commercial use are allowed under the same license.
If a submission is not accepted for publication, the author(s) will be notified.
By submitting, authors confirm that the work is original, that all listed authors have contributed and approved it, and that it does not infringe any third-party rights or duplicate work submitted elsewhere.
