摘要:The widespread increase of depression points to social causes and means that this “disease” moves from medical to social field. Studied as a social event, the variety and scope of the meanings of depression appear when the disease is analysed on the background of the society. The emergence of a new common sense, wich emerges from social relationships, begins to receive specialised attention. Recent studies of this new connotation, published in the field of medical anthropology, highlight the existence of a new connotation to the term depression and the peculiarities of its operation in urban Brazil.