clinical depression

[swapna.rajanish7]

In developed countries, such as the United States, the percentage of the population diagnosed with clinical depression is much greater than that in developing countries. Researchers hypothesize that this difference is due to the increased leisure time afforded to residents of developed countries.

The hypothesis of the researchers depends on which of the following assumptions?

a.Clinical depression is a genetically transmitted malady.
b.Access to accurate diagnostic procedures for depression is equal for residents of developing and developed countries.
c.Most activities characterized as "leisure time" in developed countries are inherently boring.
d.Certain medications that effectively treat clinical depression are not readily available in developing countries.
e.Few residents of developing countries dedicate any of their time to leisure

The answer choice is B.did not understand the explanation..can some one help??

[sarfrazyusuf]

Lets look at all the choices one by one:

A - This is actually a weakener 'coz if depression is caused by genetic reasons then it has got nothing to do with 'leisure time'.

C - 'Boring' is out of scope. Even if the activities are not boring we have no way of inferring that these would not lead to depression

D - 'Medications' and 'treatment' are out of scope. Our concern is only the 'diagnosis', what happens after that is outside the scope.

E - The argument never says that people in developing countries devote no time to leisure but only that people in developed countries devote more time to it. So E may or may not be true but it doesn't have to be true for the argument to be true.

B - Just imagine if there was some way of proving that the percentage of population suffering from depression in the two situations mentioned in the argument was actually incorrect or was not a true reflection of the ground level reality. The argument would fall part right?

If people in developing countries had less easier access to 'ACCURATE diagnostic procedures' for depression, then its possible that there are actually more people in developing countries that are suffering from depression but its just that they haven't been correctly diagnosed.

This would cause the argument to fall apart as it attacks the basic premise of the argument and hence is the correct assumption.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

[StaceyKoprince]

Premise: % of population diagnosed with depression in developed countries > % of population diagnosed with depression in developing countries.

Note: rates of diagnosis are not the same thing as rates of disease. For example, there are probably a lot of people in developing countries who have undiagnosed cancer, simply because people don't have access to the same kind of healthcare services. The rate of diagnosed disease in such a country might be a lot lower than the rate of actual disease.

Conc: the reason the premise is true is that developed-country citizens have a lot more leisure time.

P-to-C Claim: because developed-country citizens have a lot more leisure time, a greater percentage are diagnosed with depression than are diagnosed in developing countries.

We're asked for an assumption. An assumption is something the author MUST believe to be true in order to draw this conclusion from this premise.

This conclusion assumes that there is not another reason to explain the stats in the premise. This conclusion also assumes that the rate of diagnosis matches the rate of actual disease. What if the rate of actual disease is the same in both types of countries, but there are just fewer people diagnosed in the developing countries?

A) The argument above does not require that the disease be genetically transmitted.
B) This choice says that people in both types of countries are equally likely to be able to be diagnosed if they do have depression. That's important - if half of the people in the developing country can't even get diagnosed because the health infrastructure isn't there, then we can't assume that the diagnosis rates match the actual disease rates, and the argument does assume that. Looking good, but let's check the others.
C) "boring" is out of scope; the argument does not attempt to indicate WHY the "leisure time" stuff might lead to depression.
D) this is believable, but it doesn't address the premise-to-conclusion connection. This talks about treatment after someone is diagnosed. The argument talks about stuff before that - the reason why people are depressed, leading to the diagnosis.
E) IF the conclusion is true, THEN this choice would make sense - but this again doesn't address the premise-to-conclusion connection.