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Family Money: Cash Deposits or Money Funds?
By Leslie
Wright,
Managing director of Westminster Portfolio Services (Thailand) Ltd.
As a result of the stock market turmoil and loss of
investor confidence in financial institutions, cash has regained the
throne, even if only temporarily. In the past three years equity investors
have seen their portfolios fall in value by more than 50%, while investors
with crystal balls or precogniscence put their money into high-interest
deposit accounts or fixed rate long-term deposit bonds, and earned 4% or
5% a year.
Stock markets will continue to be volatile and
difficult to read as long as the wider global economic picture remains
weak. In the process cash has suffered too. Interest rates are being cut
by most central banks to bolster stuttering economic growth. Rates in the
US, Europe and the UK are at 40-year lows.
Yet cash will remain an integral part of any expat’s
finances. Savings rates may not be high, with offshore accounts currently
topping around 4.5% for sterling denominated deposits, 3% for
euro-denominated ones, and under 1.5% for US dollar accounts. Not exciting
– but your money is safe, accessible, and earning something.
Better rate of return
Providers of money market funds (MMFs) boast that these
funds give you the security of a bank deposit, but with a better rate of
return. These collective investment vehicles put your money into a range
of socalled “money market instruments” – high-interest deposit
accounts, inter-bank deposits, floating rate notes, certificates of
deposit, short dated bonds, and so on. Managers sweep cash around the
globe searching out the best rates for your money. For example, many banks
or deposit accounts pay a “headline” interest rate for a short time
but then lower it once an account has attracted a sufficient number of
savers. MMFs can avoid losing out to such marketing practices by shifting
money to the best accounts. Most MMF managers charge a management fee,
which cuts into a fund’s performance, and some charge an entry fee as
well.
What about the risk?
But whether or not you should switch assets out of
deposits and into MMFs depends on your attitude to risk. Despite looking
good in theory, most MMFs have failed to perform well enough over the long
term to win the argument against investing in straight deposit account or
fixed rate savings bonds.
In the past year some MMFs have performed well, but the
average performance of funds over three and five years is nothing
wonderful – in fact, most have significantly underperformed deposit
accounts. The top five MMFs returned at least 20% over three years –
6.66% per year – and the top three about 30%. But further down the list
and performance over three years shows losses greater than 20% –
comparable to equity funds – although in the past year several of these
poorer performers have bounced back to head the sector, reporting positive
returns of over 20%! To my mind, such volatility is worrisome and
associated more with equity funds than safe and reliable cash accounts!
How do you gauge which will be a top performer next year - or a lemon?
In short, MMFs can beat deposit account rates but over
the past three and five years they haven’t. If you want a safe place for
your cash, then the argument for savings accounts still stands. Rates will
be higher the longer you can afford to tie up your money, the best rates
being those of fixed-rate bonds that typically tie up your money for
three, four or five years – and for bigger deposits. The best fixed rate
account available at the time of writing was paying 4.75% for a
sterling-denominated one-year fixed-rate bond (Isle of Man-based Irish
Nationwide), which is a good rate given the general economic conditions.
What about guarantees?
There is another, more direct competitor to standard
deposit accounts and MMFs: the plethora of market-linked guaranteed
offshore savings products launched in the past year or so, with new ones
being launched virtually every month.
Essentially these products are deposit accounts that
typically lock up your money for three, five, or eight years and link any
interest rate or growth you may get to how one or several stock market
indices or basket of funds performs.
Guaranteed products come in an enormous variety of
shapes and sizes, but the underlying selling point of all guaranteed
products is the same: like a standard savings account, your initial
deposit or investment is safe, but if the stock market(s) or funds to
which the product is linked perform well, at maturity you will receive a
proportion – but not all – of that growth.
Your can’t lose your money – hence the word
“guarantee” – and the worst that can happen is that if the index or
investment the account is tracking falls or underperforms, you get back
just your initial deposit without any growth.
However, if you need to get at your money before the 5-
or 8-year maturity date, you will be charged an ‘early’ withdrawal
penalty – which might be quite high. You really have to buy and forget
these investment instruments, and hope the markets to which they’re
linked do well between now and maturity date. It’s the easy way for
nervous investors to protect their capital while taking a gamble on the
markets at the same time.
In the competitive fight for your money, then, which
wins? Deposit accounts, MMFs or guaranteed products? Deposit accounts are
the safest and some offer good returns. Guaranteed products are slightly
less safe, being exposed to inflation, but offer potentially higher rates
of return for your money. MMFs can do well, but the sector as a whole is
relatively volatile and performance variable and inconsistent. The average
is better than deposit accounts over one year but worse over three and
five years. Is the potential upside worth the added risk, especially when
there are guaranteed products available? It depends how adventurous you
feel. And if you feel adventurous, why not buy some selected equity funds?
Now that would be brave!
Snap Shot: 500 issues at 1/500th of
a second
by Harry Flashman
Our Editor suggested that since this is the epoch
making 500th issue of Pattaya Mail we might like to pursue the 500 theme
in the regular columns. Since 500 photographs needs 14.888 rolls of film,
that did not look like something that was worth a column. For me, the only
real connection with 500 and photography is the shutter speed of 1/500th,
so here goes. What can you do at 1/500th? Well, I’ll start by saying
something that you probably can’t do at 1/500th - and that is to
synchronise your flash burst and the shutter speed, unless you have a
camera with the shutter in the lens. If you try you will usually get a
black half of the print.
So what can you expect? Well, at that shutter speed you
should be able to stop a train in action, a runner, a bicycle and a car in
the suburbs. You won’t stop a plane or a racing car or motorcycle, as
they generally need shutter speeds of 1/1000 or faster if you really want
pin-sharp frozen action. However, if you’re into sport, set the shutter
speed on 1/500th.
What you also get at 1/500th is a huge aperture at most
light levels. F16 @ 1/60th is the same exposure value as f5.6 @ 1/500th,
the only difference being that at f16 you get depth of field, but at f5.6
you do not. So photographs taken at 1/500th will tend to have nice, out of
focus backgrounds. Portraits then taken at 1/500th will look spontaneous,
because the shutter speed is fast enough to stop the action of talking,
shaking the head, fluffing the hair, and the like, but will not have
enough depth of field to give you an untidy, distracting background. Try
this, especially if your lady has long hair, and you will get a very
professional ‘advertising’ look in the finished product. OK, Mr.
Editor, Sir, I’ve done my 500 piece!
Exposure Value
I mentioned Exposure Value (EV) in the 500 piece above,
and perhaps it is time to refresh your memory regarding EV’s. The EV is
a measure of the amount of light that comes through the camera lens and
falls on the film. It is a measure of aperture (f stop) related to time,
and can take into account the sensitivity of the film (ASA/ISO rating).
It is an “artificial” scale in that we have said
that EV 1 is assumed to be 1 second exposure @ f1.4 for 100 ASA film. As
you progressively shorten the exposure (shutter speed) or decrease the
amount of light coming through the lens by selecting a smaller aperture,
the EV number increases. Look at the chart. EV 1 is 1 second @ f1.4, while
EV 2 is half a second @ f1.4, or 1 second @ f2. Confused? Don’t be, just
remember that if you want a constant exposure level, then you are actually
dealing in EV numbers. Once you know the EV, then you can change the way
the photograph appears by altering the shutter speed and aperture together
to maintain the same EV. Hasselblad lenses with the shutter in the lens
are called “coupled” because once you set the EV you can turn the lens
barrel and automatically get the correct parameter you need.
Modern Medicine: Coughs and sneezes spread diseases
by Dr Iain Corness, Consultant
It seems that we have just gone through a coughing
season. There have been croaky coughers everywhere you turn, all sneezing
away, hoping to get rid of their infection by passing it on to you (or
me). So far I’ve avoided it, but I must admit I have held my breath in a
couple of lifts while someone is happily filling it up with freshly
coughed and incubated germs!
This is not really paranoia on my part, the way these
epidemics are spread is through what we call “droplet infection” as
every time a sufferer sneezes or coughs they spray bugs into the
atmosphere, just like you spray aerosol mozzie killers from the pressure
can at home. You then breathe in this cloud of bugs and if you are
unlucky, they like you and quickly settle into their new home - your
lungs!
Now many people when they start to get those initial
symptoms of a scratchy throat, a bit of a sniffle and then good old gut
wrenching coughing, race off to the pharmacy and ask for their favourite
coloured antibiotic, or whatever the pharmacist decides you should have
this week, and that generally means the expensive ones!
Now this is a case where the most expensive is not
necessarily the best (for the condition or your wallet) and you should
really think twice before charging into the chemist.
To begin with, is your condition caused by a bacterium
or a virus? If caused by the latter you will need an anti-viral, not an
antibacterial. Another name for an antibacterial is an antibiotic. So, if
your infecting agent is a virus, you can take as many expensive
antibiotics as you like, they will not clean up your lungs (but will clean
out your wallet, as mentioned before). This is a good reason why you
should not just start throwing antibiotics down your throat like
M&M’s.
Now how do we medico’s work out whether your
infection is bacterial or viral? Well, after asking whether or not the
sputum is clear or coloured, we can ask for a sputum sample and get the
lab to try and grow the bug. After getting the bug growing, we then feed
it an antibiotic and see if it keels over. This is called a ‘Culture and
Sensitivity’ in lab speak. Then there is a little thing called
‘clinical acumen’ which is the ‘gut feeling’ that doctors get
after many many years of looking and listening. It also helps if you are
in the middle of an epidemic and every one this week has been caused by
Staphylococcus aureus, then it is also fairly likely that you have got
that particular bug too.
What I am really proposing is that you should not rush
to the pharmacy at the first sign of a cough, but you should take some
symptomatic treatment initially (soothers for the throat and even a cough
suppressant) but if the condition continues and/or gets worse, then it is
time to see the doctor, not the pharmacist. I fully realise that the
pharmacists are now going to make effigies of me and stick them to the
wall with skewers, but I don’t care. In my book, doctors prescribe and
pharmacists dispense. It’s that clear-cut. I believe that arrangement is
also better for you, the patient.
Heart to Heart with Hillary
Dear Hillary,
With the new ban on smoking in restaurants and many of
the public places, my husband has decided to give up smoking. He has tried
many times before (he has been a smoker for almost 30 years) and every
time has been unsuccessful. He does seem to be truly interested in giving
up this time. What can I do to help?
Marie
Dear Marie,
What a wonderful wife you are! What can you do to help?
Well, the first thing would be to understand that he is going to be in for a
rough time for a couple of weeks. Plan some activities that he enjoys, so that
he is not left sitting in front of TV with a beer, thinking about the cigarette
he wants to smoke. Stay away from friends that smoke and would be likely to
offer him cigarettes, and continually reinforce his decision to quit. Suggest
going to dinner again, now that he can taste the food. Finally, get rid of the
ashtrays in the house. Lots of luck to you both.
Dear Hillary,
You may find this a strange request, but I am an American
interested in Buddhism and wondered if it would be possible that on my next
holiday here I could join a monastery. I would only have two weeks but imagine
that in that time I could at least get the basics of Buddhism. Is this possible?
I don’t mind where in Thailand that I would go as I am interested in the
study, not the geography or tourism side. I have always been impressed watching
the orange robes going along the streets with their begging bowls in the
mornings.
Warren
Dear Warren,
There is no such thing as “strange requests” in
Hillary’s letter box these days! I think I’ve seen them all. Now, to yours.
If you want to understand the basics of Buddhism, you have to start long before
you get on the plane to come to Thailand. To begin with, have you looked to see
if there is a Buddhist temple in your region in the US? Discussions with the
monks there will assist you in your quest. Monks in America can generally all
speak English, while in the temples here, they naturally speak Thai and you
would be lucky to find someone fluent in your language.
I would recommend that you get the following books before
going much further, “Buddhism Explained” (ISBN 974-7047-28-4) by Khantipalo
Bhikkhu, “Phra Farang, An English Monk in Thailand” by Phra Peter
Pannapadipo (ISBN 974-202-019-1) and “The Good Life. A guide to Buddhism for
the Westerner” by Gerald Roscoe (ISBN 974-8206-56-4). Read these before
ordering the saffron robes, Petal.
Dear Hillary,
The beautiful girls of Thailand amaze me the way they can sit
sideways so gracefully on the rear of a motorcycle. When did this custom start
and do they fall off?
Side-saddle
Dear Side-saddle,
Traditional Thai dress has included the long wrap skirt
for many years and the Thai women have ridden buffaloes, elephants and oxen long
before the Japanese motorcycle invasion. Riding side-saddle is an example of
Thai practicality. Imagine wearing a tight skirt and throwing your leg over the
Honda/Yamaha/Suzuki 125, the ideal motorcycle for a family of four. Impossible!
But you can sit sideways. Do they fall off? Yes they do, but only if the rider
loses control.
Dear Hillary,
At last you have included some success stories in your
column. Remember the very famous song “I got you babe” (Sunny & Cher)
that everyone who reads this column knows. It is about two people who fall in
love and think love will pay the bills. Well it does not work in the UK or
America or anywhere as we all know.
Two years ago I met a bar girl in Pattaya who was from Isaan.
She was intelligent and very proud of her family - did not like her work - but
as many do, did it for survival reasons. She went back to her village 2 months
after I met her and has now her pride back and works in a simple family business
and earns less than 150 baht a day. I send her help every month and visit her
village 3 times a year - and when I visit I am treated like a family member by
all her family. We intend to get married in 1 year time and yes you have got to
provide for the one you love no matter where you live in the world, but the
rewards in Thailand are well worth it.
Another Success Story
Dear Another Success Story,
Hillary will print success stories, when successful people
send them in, but the successful ones are people who are happy in their
relationship and do not need advice from an ‘agony aunt’ column like this
one, so this is why you do not read them so often. Your point is well taken and
should be understood by everyone who is contemplating entering a relationship
anywhere in the world. Love (alone) does not pay the bills. There is an
obligation to provide and I am very pleased to see that you have accepted that,
and that it is working out for you, but remember too that one couple is not
every couple. Interesting that you picked on a Sunny and Cher song - remember
what happened to them?
A Slice of Thai History: The construction of the Chiang Mai-Burma Road 1942-1945
by Duncan Stearn
Although Thailand had allied itself with Japan during
the Second World War, the relationship was more one of master and
indentured apprentice than equals. Japanese depredations against the
civilian population reflected the actions of a conqueror rather than an
ally.
For example, apart from the thousands of Allied
prisoners-of-war who died, many thousands of Thais also perished in the
construction of the infamous Burma-Siam Railway (a.k.a. the Death
Railway), carved through the inhospitable jungles of Kanchanaburi
Province.
Equally, Japanese soldiers would, according to the
reminiscences of a Thai lady who lived in a house overlooking the railway
tracks at Klong Toey, force Thais caught siphoning gasoline by way of long
plastic tubes from tankers to “...drink gasoline through the same
plastic tubes until they died.”
To support their conquest of British-held Burma, the
Japanese pressed many thousands of Thais into service to help construct a
highway through the northwest of Thailand, specifically Mae Hong Son
Province. This engineering work, through rugged terrain, was also to cost
thousands of lives (many due to malaria) and, whereas the Burma-Siam
Railway was actually completed, the Burma Road (as it came to be known)
was unfinished at war’s end.
In the early 1990s, Highway 1095 starting just north of
Chiang Mai and turning off through the small town of Pai and on to Mae
Hong Son, follows the route of the planned Japanese military supply road.
Although laid out by the Japanese it took almost fifty years before the
road became a reality.
Just before Pai there is a disused iron bridge over the
Pai River, its central steel spans bearing a plaque that reads: ‘United
States Steel Products Company. USA. 1930.’ It would appear that, just as
the central steel spans of the infamous bridge on the River Kwae (usually
misspelt Kwai) were taken from Java in Indonesia, the steel for the bridge
on the River Pai was appropriated from elsewhere in Japan’s Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, more than likely the occupied American colony
of the Philippines. The Japanese also constructed a small airstrip in Pai,
which was possibly used to supply materiel for the road-building.
In the village of Pha Bong, a few kilometres beyond Mae
Hong Son, are hot springs which were developed by the Japanese army as
they oversaw the tediously slow construction of their supply road.
Photographs taken at the time show Japanese troops tending elephants which
were allegedly treated better than the labourers in that they were given
alternate days off.
On 23 September 1943 the Japanese ambassador to
Thailand, Tsubokami met with Prime Minister Pibulsongkram and requested an
additional 20.4 million baht in funds to cover the cost of the
construction of the Chiang Mai-Burma road. Its completion was considered
pivotal to Japanese plans for re-supplying their forces in an offensive
against the British in north-eastern India.
Whether the failure to complete the road in part led to
the Japanese defeat in the Imphal campaign is moot. The campaign, begun in
March 1944, was aimed at capturing the twin towns of Imphal and Kohima and
taking the British stores. When the British refused to retreat, the start
of the monsoon season forced the Japanese into an orderly, but costly,
retreat. That the Chiang Mai-Burma Road was still not much more than a
forest cutting meant re-supply to the Japanese troops was perilously slow.
After the British, especially the Fourteenth Army under
General (later Sir) William Slim, smashed the Japanese in a series of
engagements in northern and central Burma, the remnants began a disorderly
retreat back into Thailand via both the Burma-Siam Railway and the still
uncompleted Chiang Mai-Burma Road.
Japanese civilians, left to fend for themselves in
Rangoon, evacuated as best they could and made their way via the Three
Pagodas Pass into Kanchanaburi and thence to Bangkok. However, up to 30%
died en-route and the survivors were starving when they reached the Thai
capital.
In the north, many Japanese soldiers, reduced to rags
and starving, were forced to sell what equipment and personal belongings
they had to buy food or simply begged from local villagers. Their trucks
had long since broken down or run out of fuel and the soldiers were forced
to pull their equipment in oxcarts or simply carry what they could.
It has been suggested that over 12,000 Japanese troops
were killed by Karen fighters, organized and supplied by the British
Special Operations Executive (SOE), as they attempted to retreat through
the jungles and hills of northern Burma and Thailand. Certainly, in the
early 1990s, a mass grave containing the bodies of massacred Japanese
soldiers was unearthed at the town of Ban Sala Mae Noi, a village located
on a bend in the Pai River. The Karen had little love for the Japanese,
who had forced many locals to work as porters in support of their 1942
invasion of Burma. Those soldiers who made it as far as Chiang Mai were
interned in a number of temples at the end of the war.
Personal Directions: Making Meetings Work
by Christina Dodd,
founder and managing director of Asia Training Associates
Have you ever thought of introducing games to your
meetings to spice it up a little and to - most importantly - get the
message across! You might think it’s a bit ridiculous and not quite
“business”, but for anyone who has the responsibility of conducting
meetings then clearly this approach to making meetings work, is definitely
worth thinking about. Let’s face it, most of us become immediately
disinterested when it comes to attending a meeting, unless we know that
something different is going to happen!
How do you keep the board meeting from becoming a
“bored” meeting? The same question, of course, could be posed for
staff, sales, or committee meetings, or, for that matter, for just about
any kind of group get-together. How’s your team functioning? Could
meetings with your team members be more productive?
Ask almost any colleague or member of your staff about
meetings and you’ll likely get a response clearly less than positive. In
fact, many of us would emphatically state that far too many meetings are a
waste of time. Unfortunately, in many organizations, they are! But a
certain amount of “meeting” must happen as it forms part of the
business ritual and necessity to getting things done.
It is very much the view that many meetings miss their
mark simply for the lack of planning or preparation. One study of over
1000 middle managers identified the top three reasons why meetings fail:
1. Getting off the subject
2. Lack of agenda or goals
3. Lasting too long
Sound familiar? I’m sure it does. How about the
meeting you ran the other day? How much time and money are wasted every
day in meetings that are unproductive? Every business day, wasteful
meetings are held - far too often with the same negative results. Games,
however, can make your meetings more engaging, more productive, and more
cost-effective. Yes that’s right - GAMES!
Games have been used to supplement and upgrade meetings
ever since it was discovered that people have very short attention spans!
In fact, studies claim that the span of attention for most of us varies
anywhere from ten seconds to three or four minutes! It’s easy to see,
then, why people become easily bored (or overwhelmed) with technical
material and respond much better when a meeting has life and variety.
In addition, our television-oriented society has
conditioned many of us to expect drama, excitement, and involvement in our
everyday lives. In short, group members expect meetings to be lively,
fast-paced, innovative, participative and imaginative. (Just for the fun
of it, how many of those words describe your last meeting?) Games can
materially help accomplish these objectives by focusing attention on the
needs of the attendees, not on those of the meeting leader.
The unique features of games make them usable and
appropriate for meetings because games usually:
1. Are quick to use. They can range for a five or
ten-second physical activity, through to a one-minute visual illustration
or verbal vignette, up to a 20 or 30-minute group discussion exercise.
However, since the activity should be used to add or supplement the main
purpose or content of the meeting, the time devoted to the game should be
minimal.
2. Are inexpensive. In general, nothing has to be
purchased, nor does an outside facilitator or consultant have to be
engaged. Perhaps the addition of simple props can add emphasis to a point,
but this doesn’t have to cost much at all to add realism to the
activity.
3. Are participative. To be used effectively, games
should involve participants either physically or psychologically. Games
typically help people to focus their attention and make them think, react,
speak, and, most importantly, have fun while doing their jobs!
4. Are adaptable. The best activities, like the best
humorous stories, can be adapted to fit almost any situation, and
reinforce the points that you want to make in your meeting. They can be
modified slightly and still retain their original flavour and character.
5. Are single-focus. Games are best used when they
demonstrate or illustrate just one major point. As such they are geared to
micro issues as opposed to macro issues and the simpler they are and the
more focused they are - the more they will do their job for you!
All of this doesn’t just happen - you as the leader
of the meeting have to plan and prepare - and the more effort you put into
it at this end in the initial stages, the far greater the results.
Carefully selecting the correct strategy to ensure the game will have the
desired effect is paramount. Perhaps you want to make a point without
lecturing, uncover people problems in a department, spark lively group
discussions - planning and preparation is everything.
Why are games good learning experiences?
Basically we can say that people learn best by
“doing”. It is a proven fact that people remember something much
better if it is tied to some kind of active, physical involvement. Since
games and activities invariably have built-in participation, this
stimulates the learning process and people are very responsive to this
factor.
Games can be powerful tools to induce motivation in
people. They can be useful avenues to stimulate problem solving. They can
be useful starting points to get group members to accept the need for
change and begin to act on that need. Games can create a climate of
openness and constructive confrontation - in a “safe” environment - to
reveal and address hidden problems. They can be valuable stimulants for
legitimizing candid conversation about what it means to be a team. Games
can be very effective in identifying “communication breakdown” and
ways to improve upon it.
Although it might seem that games are designed just to
have fun, in reality most games can communicate a point more effectively
than just talking.
If you need some direction in order to make your
meetings work better and do what they are supposed to do, then please
contact me by email at [email protected] - Asia Training
Associates. Our programs are designed to provide you with the appropriate
methods and tools to get the most out of your meetings.
Until next time - have a great week!
Women’s World: Another day to get through
“Depression has been called the ‘common cold of psychiatry”
by Lesley Warmer
Watch the expression on someone’s face when you
mention ‘depression’. It’s widely assumed that when a woman
complains of depression she should snap out of it and stop being so
miserable. The only people who say this are those that have never suffered
with the illness. You cannot snap out of it, with the best will in the
world.
One tends to feel a little embarrassed to admit to
having suffered with this complaint as if it’s a weakness. Believe me it
can be a dangerous disease, driving a person to the edge of a huge black
hole within them and if they succumb there can sometimes be no return. A
depressed person feels so alone and no matter how many friends and family
surround them, they are not seen, there is only isolation.
Depression can cause incapability of the simplest
everyday task, for example to clean the house, do the shopping, making a
simple choice like what brand of soap powder to buy, can reduce one to
tears. To face anyone, even the milkman, can become a terror and cause
absolute panic to the extent of making the depressed person hide away to
avoid contact with another human being.
Everybody gets ‘depressed’ from time to time but
there is a big difference between feeling a little low for a couple of
days, and depression. When you are feeling low, you can usually find
something that will cheer you up, whether telephoning or seeing a friend,
or just treating yourself. But the illness depression is a low mood that
can last for a very long time and can actually affect the way you live
your life, ruining relationships. It’s very hard to live with a person
suffering with this illness. This serious depressive illness is long term
and severe and needs professional help to treat.
Depressive illness is very common, although there are
no reliable figures because many people suffer in silence. In Britain
alone, the Royal College of Psychiatrists state that 5 percent of adults
suffer with depressive illness at any one time. As always, it’s more
likely in women than men. It’s estimated that one out of every seven
women will suffer from depression in their lifetime.
Depressive disorders occur in all social classes and
can strike at any age for all manner of reasons; dissatisfaction with your
job, loneliness and relationship problems are just a few. Women who have
experienced recent adverse or traumatic events, such as bereavement,
divorce, loss of money or status, rejection by a loved one or the need to
care for small children under difficult circumstances, are at greater risk
of becoming depressed.
Women frequently develop depression after having a
baby. Between 50% and 80% of mothers develop the ‘blues’ within a few
days of giving birth. It is not usually serious and disappears within a
few days, but don’t be afraid to consult your doctor.
Unfortunately a good percentage of sufferers of this
illness do not consult their doctor; DO NOT SUFFER ALONE.
Depression affects women in different ways and produces
both psychological and physical symptoms. There can be mood swings,
anxiety and despair; the anxiety can result in loss of appetite and
weight, constipation, decline in sexual interest, headaches,
sleeplessness, loss of energy and tiredness. Only your doctor can
accurately diagnose depression. Many doctors now believe that some
‘blip’ in the brain chemistry, which makes sufferers susceptible to
the condition, causes depression. The illness may then be triggered by
stress, physical illness, drug abuse, etc.
It’s been suggested that too much sleep can increase
depressed feelings. I agree with this for myself. Don’t stay in bed or
sleep for more than 8 hours a day. When I read up on how to avoid
depression I had to laugh, it’s advised that you exercise (oh! Not
again), get lots of natural sunlight (but not sunbathe), don’t drink,
don’t smoke, don’t sleep too much and watch the diet - enough to make
you depressed don’t you think?
A serious word of warning if someone close to you is a
sufferer of this illness. People suffering from depression can sometimes
feel suicidal and threats should be taken seriously: 15% of all
depressives eventually commit suicide.
The good news is that most people do recover from depression and many
learn a lot of valuable things about themselves from the experience.
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