Health Highlights: Aug. 19, 2007

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Depression Over-Diagnosed, Psychiatrist Says

Many people diagnosed with depression are actually just unhappy, says an Australian psychiatrist who contends that the clinical threshold for depression is too low,BBC Newsreported.

Professor Gordon Parker of the University of New South Wales wrote in theBritish Medical Journalthat almost all people experience symptoms such as "feeling sad, blue or down in the dumps" at some time in their lives. However, that's not the same as clinical depression.

He conducted a 15-year study of 242 teachers and found that more than 75 percent of them met the current criteria for depression. Parker described depression as a "catch-all" diagnosis driven by clever marketing,BBC Newsreported.

"Over the last 30 years the formal definitions for defining clinical depression have expanded into the territory of normal depression, and the real risk is that the milder, more common experiences risk being pathologised," Parker wrote.

However, the same issue of theBritish Medical Journalfeatured an article by another psychiatrist who contradicted Parker's opinion. Increased diagnosis of depression has helped prevent suicides and reduced the stigma of mental illness, Professor Ian Hickie wrote.

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