"common cold" of psych disorders?

I'm in my second psych class and we've been discussing depression and major depression. According to my text depression is considered the "common cold" of psychological disorders. What does this mean? I believe that prolonged emotions surrounding events in our lives (depression) would be common be the mental illness...depression, is it so common?

I hate that description! It makes it sound like it's something that is just not that big of a deal. And yet, those of us afflicted suffer so much and many have their lives destroyed by it.

tulips

I agree, the description "common cold" minimizes it's seriousness. But I will say that I think depression is most definitely overly diagnosed. It's most likely the making of encouragement from pharmaceutical companies.

As far as real depression though...yes, it's very serious and shouldn't be considered anything else.

I also think it is unfortunate that the word "depression" became a part of our daily vocabulary. People say "oh, I'm so depressed" when they mean they are having a bad day, or are disappointed etc. It completely lost it's meaning as a serious psychiatric mood disorder.

I agree that tv has made depression something that everbody thinks they have. We are supposed to be feeling "happy" or we are "depressed". My husband is a pharmacist and say's that so many people are almost demanding their doctors to prescribe anti-depressants. They have NO idea what major depression really is or how powerful psychiatric drugs are. It's like "Give me a quick-fix now"

tulips

yes Tulips...people misunderstand what real depression is and most people want a quick fix to deal with their problems. It's similar to the suppression that narcotics and street drugs do for a person, just legal.

If only it was more known, the difference between "sad" because my Grandmothers sick and "depressed" no matter the life circumstance. There is a huge difference.

I'm a frog of little brain so I'm not sure this topic isn't way over my head. However, I agree with both of you.

Depression to identify sadness has little to do with depression to signify "I can't cope."

As to the reason depression is so over diagnosed....
Is it an umbrella type tag, a scapegoat diagnosis for "I don't want to research further".
Or perhaps it is the by product of the over stressed world we live in without the coping skills necessary to survive.

I do not have the answer.

I think of it being described as the common cold in that it attacks all people indiscriminately and that it is, obviously, a common occurance since many ppl have clinical depression. It does however minimise the seriousness of depression, though I'm not sure that was the intention.

I too think this is not a good way to say that depression is dx'ed more than any other mental illness. It does feel trivialized in those terms.

It seems to me that there is still too much stigma attached to going to therapy to work on one's issues and illnesses. It's so much easier and almost a sign of the times to pop that pill that makes it all better and not put the effort into realizing why we feel a certain way and working on changing our concepts and behaviors.

At the same time, I wonder if that comment was meant more in the context that so many individuals suffer from the effects of depression, just like so many suffer from the common cold? It really may not mean to trivialize depression...just quantify the amount of folks who suffer from it.


sabby

There's a backlash to the trivialization:

http://www.depressionisreal.org/

But there are a lot of people depressed, more than ever before both because there's more people in the world and the world is going harder and faster so we're more stressed (and liable to catch a "cold") but I think it's "contageous" to a certain degree too; people who grow up around a depressed person are more apt to be depressed, etc.

I'm glad I was depressed in the 1970s when it wasn't identified as often or "popular" in the media so I just lived through it, but don't feel any stigma or hype or confusion about it now, it just seemed like my "life" rather than something wrong with me. I didn't separate it from me and wonder when "it" was going to go away, etc. like it had a mind of its own. I was seeing my therapist part of the time who I then saw later when I was no longer depressed and it's interesting to me the difference in therapy.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
tulips30 said:
I also think it is unfortunate that the word "depression" became a part of our daily vocabulary. People say "oh, I'm so depressed" when they mean they are having a bad day, or are disappointed etc. It completely lost it's meaning as a serious psychiatric mood disorder. tulips

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I could not agree more. I absolutely hate when people describe themselves as feeling that way ... in my mind I'm like "you have no idea"

(((((hugs to everyone)))))

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
depression, is it so common?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Yes, it is. I believe one stat is that 20% of people will experience it sometime in their lifetimes. I think the comparison to the cold just is meant to highlight how rampant the problem is, not to trivialize it.

Also, depression is "real" whether it is in reaction to stressful life events or not. Both result in similar biochemistry in the brain. Stress triggers all sorts of biochemical pathways, changes levels of neurotransmitters, etc. Depression in response to life events is indeed very real and can be debilitating and last a long time.

I think one reason depression is so commonly diagnosed is partly because providers are protecting their patients. A mood disorder such as depression is a much less "serious" diagnosis than many other conditions and doesn't carry the stigma of many others. Doctors, therapists, etc. protect their patients by reporting the least serious diagnosis for which they can get reimbursed from health insurance. (It doesn't mean this affects their treatment, which they can target to the true problem.) We have experienced this in my daughter's psychotherapy. Although in the end we decided not to seek reimbursement from insurance for her therapy--because she is a minor, and we did not want to place evidence in her medical files that might limit her later opportunities in life--we were advised that if we did want to seek reimbursement, that depression would be the best to report to insurance, even though it was not necessarily her problem. Yep, it's all part of the insurance game. I appreciate our health care providers watching out for my daughter and her future and letting us know all this (and we have been lucky enough to be able to afford to pay out of pocket at this time, but that may be changing). Anyway, I think a number of the depression diagnoses (although not most) could be for this reason.