Collective depression

Collective depression is one of many collective mental states, such as collective elation, collective paranoia, collective trauma, or collective grief, which may affect a group, community or whole nation. It is characterised by a prevailing and seemingly permanent sense of inadequacy, despondency, lack of vitality, sadness and hopelessness, shared by a high proportion of the members of a collectivity. The work of Gustave Le Bon, writing in 1895, suggests that it may be passed by social contagion, in a way similar to a physical condition.