Feelings of sadness are ubiquitous but the concept of depression is ill-defined – and the risk is medication being inappropriately prescribed
- The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work
Not a week goes by that a public figure – Naomi Osaka is the most recent – doesn’t disclose their battle with depression. The frequency of these revelations should occasion no surprise given the ubiquity of feelings of sadness.
So, why depict depression as a conundrum? One way to unravel this matter is by telling the stories of six randomly selected patients (thoroughly de-identified) I have treated in my psychiatric practice, some of them with the help of colleagues.