Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses which affects more people than you might think. And new research suggests that depression can affect individual and collective safety at work, leading to more personal injury claims.

Those with depression are more likely to take days off, feeling that cloud of gloom form, making them feel that it is impossible to get out of bed. With absenteeism, accidents increase, as workplaces are understaffed or draft in less qualified replacements.

And those who do venture into work while suffering from depression could be placing themselves and other workers at risk through decreased attentiveness resulting in an increase of accidents at work.

This is a pressing problem as the National Institute of Mental Health has released figures which show that in a 12 month period, over six per cent of employed individuals reported suffering from a major depressive disorder.

And that figure is even higher when removing the year long time span. As many as sixteen per cent of employed individuals will suffer from depression at some point during their lives.

The cost of depression on productivity, medical care and increased accidents, reaches into the billions.

The problem is that many workers are loathe to admit that they are suffering from depression due to the social stigma attached to the illness.

Many will go into work anyway and work at a poor standard, causing distress to themselves and costing their employer.

The World Health Organisation says that depression is the number two cause of disability in the world.

How can you identify depression?

Depressive disorders are whole person illnesses; they concern the body, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. The depression itself can make us feel as if it's hopeless to try to find help. The excellent news is that 80 to 90 percent of people with depression can be treated successfully, but the bad news is that only one sufferer in three seeks treatment. More bad news is that almost half the public see depression as a character defect, rather than an illness or emotional disorder. In addition, only half of all cases of depression are correctly diagnosed, and only half of those get satisfactory treatment.

We tend to confuse depression, sadness, and grief. But the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality - the ability to experience a full range of emotion, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief. Depression is not an emotion itself. It's not sadness or grief, it's an illness. When we feel at our worst, sad, self-absorbed, and helpless, we are experiencing what people with depression experience, but they don't recover from those moods without help.

The trademark of depression is a unrelenting sad or empty mood, sometimes experienced as tension or anxiety. Life shortage of pleasure. People with minor depressions may go through the motions of eating, sex, work, or play, but the activities appear shallow; people with more severe depression withdraw from these activities, feeling too drained, tense, or hostile to contribute. There is often a nagging fatigue, a sense of being powerless to focus, a feeling of being ineffective.

People with depression usually experience a lowered self-esteem. In a depression, you may feel that you are a helpless victim of fate, but also feel that you don't deserve any better. Feelings of guilt, dishonor, and misery are common.

There are often a host of physical symptoms, of which sleep disturbances are key. People may have difficulty falling asleep or may get up early without feeling refreshed. Others may sleep excessively, again without feeling rested. Appetite may increase or decrease. There may be difficulty in sexual functioning. There may be harassing aches and pains that don't respond to medical treatment. But there are physical illnesses that cause symptoms like depression - Lyme depression, diabetes, thyroid conditions, anemia - and depressions can cause physical symptoms like other diseases.