A feeling of alarm caused by the expectation of danger, pain, disaster or other calamities, fear may lead to aggression and violence including war and conflict of all kinds. It may also lead to discrimination, conformism, inertia, alienation, delusion, dependency, lack of participation, corruption, injustice and inequality. Fear may exist in the form of general anxiety which has no object. Fear may also be phobic, that is, very specific to a particular object, condition, environment, etc, such as claustrophobia. Fear of grievous physical injury or death in the face of a real threat may cause tremor, sweating, heart palpitation, and involuntary passing of urine or faeces. Fear itself can be a cause of death, by shock or heart attack. Fear can grip whole armies or civilian populations.

Depression is a disease with a specific set of symptoms, notably a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Depression sufferers lose vitality, self-esteem and experience mood disorders. Depression is the cause of unreasonable and unnecessary suffering for millions of people, often to the point of disabling the sufferer. Depressed individuals usually struggle with completing their day-to-day tasks, feeling as if there’s no more point in living. 

Depressive disorders can be found throughout the world. Depressive patients account for a significant proportion of all those requiring mental heath care and, as the majority of them remain untreated, their suffering continues to disable them and to cause losses to their families and communities. The situation is especially severe in developing countries. Lack of adequate detection and treatment is due to poorly-trained health workers, scarce resources, and insufficient knowledge.

By 2020 depression will be the second most debilitating disease, yet in many parts of the world depression is stigmatized, with many people refusing treatment for fear of social backlash. Even so, tremendous strides are being made in the study and treatment of depression, including a better understanding of its causes and how best to treat it.

In psychiatry, a major depressive episode refers to a clinical syndrome consisting of lowering of mood-tone (feelings of painful dejection), and loss of interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities, most of the time for a period of at least two weeks. It is experienced as a paralyzing listlessness, dejection and self-deprecation, as well as an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. It is a pathological state of conscious psychic suffering and guilt, accompanied by a marked reduction in the sense of personal values, and a diminution of mental, psychomotor, and even organic activity, unrelated to actual deficiency. As used by the layman, the word depression refers to the mood element, which in psychiatry would more appropriately be labelled dejection, sadness, gloominess, despair or despondency. Dysthymia is the state just below the threshold for major depression.

Increasing population density, urbanization, industrialization and other development schemes, are exerting ever increasing pressure on the carrying capacity of land and resources, leading in particular to a rapid rate of deforestation, expanding desertification in some countries, and the near extinction of some wildlife species. Physical factors such as earthquakes, hurricanes, monsoon rains and the immense problem of poverty in some countries accelerate the decline in environmental resources.

Juvenile crime, as all crime, has been increasing. Brutal crime among young offenders also is increasingly evidenced in reports, particularly on urban areas. Some offenders are psychotic and their offences may range from suicide to mass murder. Others are anti-social and given to minor acts of defiance. Ease of access to weapons, drug addiction, unemployment, and economic motives, are the more obvious circumstances leading to crime; but modern societal stress, breakdown of family life, deviant role models, threats of nuclear war and the confusion in values which produce unstable feelings and distorted ideas, all contribute to aggravate violence among youth.

Illiteracy is the inability to read and write. A person is defined as illiterate if he cannot, with understanding, both read and write a short and simple statement on his everyday life; and as functionally illiterate if he cannot engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for the effective functioning of his group and community, and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his own and the community's development. Lack of such abilities prevents individuals from going about their daily activities in modern society, seeking suitable employment, or moving about normally with comprehension of the usual printed expressions and messages they encounter. Its consequences include inability to take up basic social services, fill in even simple forms, and understand traffic instructions or other danger signs.