A recent Finnish study shows that people are often given misleading information about depression. According to the researchers, the incorrect information makes it harder for people to understand the causes of their suffering.
Most psychiatric diagnoses are purely descriptive. For example, a diagnosis of depression is merely a description of the various psychological symptoms — not the cause. Yet depression is often referred to as a disorder that causes bad mood and other symptoms.
Researchers describe this as a form of circular reasoning, meaning that psychiatric diagnoses are often discussed in a circular manner, as if they were describing the causes of symptoms. This makes it difficult for people to understand their distress.
“Depression should be considered a diagnosis similar to headaches. Both are medical diagnoses, but neither explains what is causing the symptoms. Like headaches, depression is a description of a problem that can have many different causes. A diagnosis of depression is not. can explain the cause of a depressed mood just as well as a diagnosis of headache explains the cause of pain in the head,” says Jani Kajanoja, a postdoctoral researcher and physician specializing in psychiatry at the University of Turku in Finland.
This misconception is also perpetuated by mental health professionals, according to a recent study from the University of Turku and Helsinki University of the Arts.
In the study, researchers analyzed publicly available information on depression provided by leading international health organizations. The researchers selected the websites of English-language organizations whose information on depression was most influential according to search engine results. The organizations included the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, and Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities.
Most organizations portrayed depression on their websites as a disorder that causes symptoms and/or explained what caused the symptoms, although this is not the case. None of the organizations presented the diagnosis as a pure description of symptoms, which would have been correct.
“Presenting depression as a one-size-fits-all disorder that causes depressive symptoms is a circular argument that clouds our understanding of the nature of mental health problems and makes it more difficult for people to understand their own suffering,” Kajanoja said.
The researchers suspect that the problem is caused by a cognitive bias.
“People seem to have a tendency to think that a diagnosis is an explanation, even when it is not. It is important that professionals do not reinforce this misconception with their communication, and instead help people understand their condition,” says professor and neuropsychologist Jussi Valtonen from the Helsinki University of the Arts.
