A full house was on hand for Wednesday’s (May 2) panel discussion on coping with stress, a “Caring for the Harvard Community” event. Facilitated by Families for Depression Awareness — a nonprofit organization founded by speaker Julie Totten after her brother committed suicide in 1999 — the talk focused on stress and its relationship to depression.
Paul Barreira, a psychiatrist and the director of Harvard’s Department of Behavioral Health and Academic Counseling, started the meeting by presenting some disturbing statistics, including that 60 percent of students consistently report feeling “overwhelmed” and up to 14 percent are diagnosed with depression — though nearly double that number believe their depression has reached clinical levels.
Totten then outlined the symptoms of depression — including anxiety, trouble concentrating, changes in diet and sleeping habits, aches and pains, alcohol or drug abuse, and feeling sad, empty, or irritable — and encouraged audience members to reach out to friends or family they believe might be depressed or even stressed, as there is a high correlation between the two conditions.
Totten 
