Collective depression
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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.[1][failed verification] The work of Gustave Le Bon, writing in 1895, suggests that it may be passed by social contagion,[2] in a way similar to a physical condition.