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.
