Week 2 Reflection

Depressive Disorders

What exactly does the author mean by saying major depressive disorder is “the common cold of mental health”? Is this comparison referring to a lack of cure, simply its commonality/frequency in patients, or something else? The author also states that major depressive disorder involves mood. Q: What exactly causes mood? A: External things like events, internal things like brain chemicals (though this is currently under debate), and a patient’s past, such as memories/trauma, and current events that trigger thoughts of those past events/trauma.

            The author emphasizes the importance of individualized treatment plans. This is one of the reasons why the field of mental health is so complicated: every individual responds to various treatments differently. Maybe this significant variety in treatment response is inherent to the fact that mental health deals with a patient’s mind, which is highly personalized and can easily become trivialized when looking at a more scientific, impersonal, empirical view. It is imperative to remember the humanity involved in this field. The thing that distinguishes humans and makes us superior to other animals is our mind. It is not something to be treated lightly. Do twins often respond similarly to the same mental health treatment(s)? The resources a client has also have to be taken into consideration, such as support from others and finances. Will treatment require the patient to take time off from work/school (inpatient treatment, ECT)? Finally, a cost/benefit analysis should be done and the likelihood of treatment’s efficacy should be taken into consideration.

            According to WHO “depressive disorders were the leading cause of disability” (Dziegielewski 243). Despite this, there is a significant, sometimes debilitating, stigma associated with essentially all mental health diseases. Why is there a stigma if depressive disorders are so common? Maybe people think patients diagnosed with depression are being “dramatic” or are simply trying to get out of certain obligations by emphasizing their symptoms of depression. The author also states “50-80% [of patients with a depressive disorder] go unrecognized or misdiagnosed” (Dziegielewski 243). That is terrifying and is probably at least partially because the “symptoms of depression…[are] often one of the most ambiguous to define” (Dziegielewski 243). How is “disabled” in terms of the mental health field defined? If you have “clinically depressed mood,” does that automatically categorize you as disabled? How was the statistic on undetected depression in primary care found? How is undetected depression detected? Was it diagnosed and determined that it had a much earlier onset and thus went undetected for some time?

            The author mentions culture on page 244 in terms of depression in White Americans versus African Americans. Generally, White Americans face less stigma and are more open to treatment for mental health diseases. Alternatively, African Americans may simply not have the same accessibility to mental health treatment. Also, females are diagnosed with depression at a rate twice as high as men’s rate of depression diagnoses. Multiple sources have found and stated that this doesn’t mean more women than men are depressed but that women are much more likely to report depression. Women do not face shame when displaying/talking about their emotions. Alternatively, men have a higher rate of completed suicide, although women have a higher rate of suicide attempts because men are more likely to attempt suicide in a more violent form, such as the use of a gun, while women are more likely to take a more passive route such as medication overdose.