Everyone knows somebody or knows someone that knows a person that is battling depression if not themselves. It is a terrible disease and can have a major impact on how well an individual can function in their daily lives. For those who don’t know, depression is “a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn’t worth living.” I would never say that depression is something that should not be taken seriously, but just how many actually suffer through this disorder?

A Liverpool University Professor of Primary Care, Chris Dowrick, came out in a piece in the British Medical Journal, that depression is being overly diagnosed and many people who are on medication should not be. Many of the people who are on medication for depression often have other troubles on their mind that are causing them to feel that way. He notes examples like lack of sleep, sexual issues, struggling with the loss of a person in their life. Since 2002, there has been a spike in a diagnosis for depression or anxiety of up to double the amount that previously are diagnosed, with an estimated five million people in the United Kingdom alone. Dowrick has a fear that by diagnosing too many people with depression and putting them on anti-depressants when in fact they are going through normal difficulties in life, will trigger a dependency especially considering that the medication would not have as effective of an effect of feeling better then people who truly are battling depression. He attributes this to depression having a more simpler meaning in the 1980s’ of feelings of sadness, diet changes, or sleep deprivation for a period of time. Problems that a vast amount of people face.

The same problem can be seen of over diagnosing depression in the United States. In the last 20 years, the United States has had a 400% rise in the amount of people who are on anti-depressants. Rami Mojtabai, of John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, decided to conduct a study to determine whether or not over-diagnosis was taking place. He took 5,639 people who had been diagnosed with depression in 2009 and 2010 by a clinician outside of a hospital environment. These people were then given interviews to see if they matched the requirements of having major depressive disorder, which is the official name in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that is used to diagnosed individuals with specific disorders. The requirements of having major depressive disorder state a person “had to have experienced a major depressive episode — defined as a debilitating depressed mood or loss of interest in daily activities for at least two consistent weeks — in the past twelve months.”

The conclusion to this study showed that only 38.4% of the 5,639 people that received a diagnosis for depression actually had it. In the 38.4%, thoughts or attempts at suicide were noted. Taking this a step further, of the 38.4%, 14.3% were of the age of 65 or older. What these individuals had in common were they had gone through a divorce, suffered from poor health, or were not working anymore were more prone to truly battling depression. As for the other 61.6%, 42.7% had encountered depressive episodes in their life, but were much more minor than the group that had major depressive disorder. Another statistic that this study showed is of all the participants, 75% were prescribed anti-depressants.

Sources: 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2534408/Depression-diagnosed-drugs-dished-patients-simply-sad-unable-sleep-warns-expert.html

http://www.dualdiagnosis.org/resource/depression/

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/basics/definition/con-20032977

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/study-most-people-diagnosed-with-depression-do-not-actually-meet-criteria/275436/

http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/12/1/225/figure/F3?highres=y