World Health Organization researchers released a report Friday that shows depression is more harmful to a person’s health than asthma, angina, arthritis or diabetes.

People suffering from depression report poorer health than those suffering from chronic physical diseases such as angina, arthritis, asthma or diabetes. If they suffer from one of these, depression tends to make them even worse.

Researchers from the World Health Organization examined data from nearly 250,000 patients from 60 countries across the world. Those surveyed were asked to consider a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 indicated worst health and 100 best health.

The researchers found that those suffering from depression had an average score of 72.9, a considerably lower figure than those reported from patients suffering from chronic illnesses.

Asthmatics had an average score of 80.3, angina sufferers of 79.6; 79.3 for arthritis sufferers and 78.9 for those with diabetes.

“Our main findings show that depression impairs health state to a substantially greater degree than the other diseases,” the researchers wrote in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Lead author Dr. Somnath Chatterji said the study emphasized the need to improve treatment for depression.

“When people come for treatment for long-term chronic diseases, doctors tend to focus mainly on the physical diseases; they are not looking for depression.

“This study reinforces the importance of recognizing and treating depression as part of chronic illness because it's a much more effective way to improve people's health than just dealing with chronic physical illness.”

He added: “Treatment of mental illness is a necessity, not a luxury.”

The WHO lists depression as the fourth leading cause of disease burden and expects it to become the second leading cause by 2020.

Dr. Chatterji and his colleagues’ study is the first global analysis comparing the effect of depression with that of four chronic physical diseases.