I came across this article which says that maybe those “50 percent of the US population has depression!” statistic may be *gasp* inaccurate. Here are some of the problems with the community surveys that are used to come up with that 50 percent statistic:
The problem is that the criteria used in the community surveys are not necessarily valid for diagnosing mental disorders. One reason for this is that people self-select when seeking treatment and use their judgment to decide if their feelings exceed normal responses to stressful events. Second, clinicians make contextual judgments when they diagnose patients because some depressive symptoms might occur as a normal response to a loss of a job or a marriage unraveling. In surveys, interviewers are forbidden to judge the validity of a response or discuss the intent of a question. In addition, the duration criteria of community surveys only require that symptoms last at least two weeks, causing transient and self-correcting problems to be counted as disorders.
The article mentions a number of reasons why these flawed numbers have been so widely embraced.
- “political support is more likely for an agency devoted to preventing and treating a widespread disease such as the National Institute of Mental Health”
- “pharmaceutical companies capitalize on these survey findings to broaden their markets”
- “Lastly, advocacy groups lay claim to the prevalence of mental disorders. They equate the millions of people that surveys identify with disorders with the serious mental disorders in order to reduce the social distance between the mentally disordered and others, thereby lowering the stigma.”
I totally understand the desire to exaggerate the prevelance of mental illness. The more people that have it the less of a freak I am, right? And stigma sucks. But ultimately statistical over-representation of mental illness makes it seem less serious or legitimately deserving of quality treatment.
I’m reminded of the many times I’ve been depressed and gotten advice from people who have also, in their minds, experienced clinical depression. Like the 3 days after your boyfriend dumped you! Or when you were 7 and Fluffy the cat ran away! I’m not saying those events weren’t traumatic or that you didn’t have a perfectally valid emotional response, all I’m saying is that if I hear “you don’t need therapy and/or medication… you just need a positive attitude!” I’m going to scream.
