Study Finds Top Health Organizations Mislead on Depression

Recently, there has been a discovery of a disturbing trend in how depressed people are presented by the major health organizations. These organizations tend to describe depression as a disorder causing symptoms rather than it being simply a label for those symptoms. This can cause problems when someone tries to understand why they are feeling depressed and this may disrupt effective treatment and emotional regulation. The study, which was published in Psychopathology journal, demonstrates that more clarification is needed in communication about mental illness diagnoses.

Understanding Depression

Depression is an intricate psychological condition that makes people sad all the time, lose interest in activities and have many physical and emotional issues. Unlike some diseases with specific causes, depressed people are diagnosed based on several symptoms not only one clear cause. Some of these include changes in sleep patterns, appetite, energy levels, concentration, daily behavior or self-esteem. Nonetheless, despite its multifactorial nature, a depressive state completely alters an individual’s ability to function normally in life; hence if it is not properly addressed can have severe consequences.

Misleading Descriptions

The study aimed at dealing with an important problem: the way public understanding of depression as well as other psychiatric diagnosis is conveyed across to them. Most of the leading health institutions portray depression as something directly responsible for low mood among other signs which amounts fallacy because it assumes what it sets out to show thereby making it confusing for the people who require guidance regarding their mental health issues.

Researchers from the University of Turku and the University of Arts Helsinki investigated how widespread this misconception is among authoritative health sources. They found out that when major health organizations provide distorted information on mental health aspects like this one can be put off track from comprehending their mental welfare correctly thus complicating appropriate help seeking alongside interventions.

The Impact of Miscommunication  

When individuals believe that their depressive symptoms are caused by some external pathological process they often feel less empowered to approach the actual sources of their despair. Hence, this can lead to helplessness and obstruct them from finding coping strategies that work or making the necessary changes in their lives.

“Depression should be considered similar to a headache. Both are medical diagnoses, but neither explains what causes the symptoms. Like a headache, depression is a description of a problem that can have many different causes. A diagnosis of depression does not explain the cause of depressed mood any more than a diagnosis of headaches explains the cause of pain in the head,” said Jani Kajanoja, a postdoctoral researcher and medical doctor at the University of Turku.

Research Methodology

Researchers first selected top-ranking health organizations’ websites using search engines like Google as part of choosing influential English-language websites for this research. The University of Harvard among other prestigious institutions such as John Hopkins were also included in this selection process as well as prominent international bodies responsible for public health such as World Health Organization (WHO) and American Psychiatric Association (APA). In order to focus mainly on those sources that an internet user is most likely to come across when searching for information about depression online.

The researchers used content analysis technique to assess data presented by these sites. Depression descriptions were classified into three groups: causally explanatory, purely descriptive and unspecified.

• Causally Explanatory: This category describes depression as causing its symptoms like low mood and loss of interest.
• Solely Descriptive: Depression is presented purely descriptively without suggesting causality between symptoms.
• Vague: Diagnosis-symptom relationship is unclear or mixed.

Major Findings

Authoritative health organizations portray depression in an inaccurate manner. All the websites that were analyzed did not present a clear and explicit diagnosis of depression, which was purely descriptive. Rather, 53% of them described depression using causally explanatory language, meaning that depression causes exactly the same depressive symptoms it aims to describe.

For instance, on the World Health Organization’s website, it is written as “depression can cause immense suffering, affect performance in jobs and schools and adversely influence the relationships within a family while for American Psychiatric Association’s site depressions is identified as causing sadness as well as loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities.”

On the other hand, 47% used ambiguous language such that they neither seemed to claim that depression was responsible for symptoms nor merely a description. This also adds to public confusion since it does not shed light on what the diagnosis really means about.

“Presenting depression as a uniform disorder that causes depressive symptoms is circular reasoning that blurs our understanding of the nature of mental health problems and makes it harder for people to understand their distress,” said Kajanoja.

Solving The Issue

According to researchers, cognitive bias could be blamed for this problem. “Even when ‘diagnosis’ does not explain anything (and more often than not it doesn’t), people tend to see explanations in diagnoses. Therefore doctors must never reinforce this fallacy through their information but rather facilitate comprehension among patients,” notes Jussi Valtonen from University of Arts Helsinki.

Limitations and Future Research

The study has some limitations. It only examined English websites from major health bodies thereby leaving out subtleties evident from non-English sources or minor less known institutions. Moreover, all possible sources of depression information were not covered in the analysis such as social media or patient forums, which also shape public understanding.

It can be suggested that future research should expand its sources of information to include a wider variety of resources and languages. This would provide insights regarding how these misleading descriptions affect people’s thoughts and activities concerning mental health.

“A Descriptive Diagnosis or a Causal Explanation? Accuracy of Depictions of Depression on Authoritative Health Organization Websites” was written by Jani Kajanoja and Jussi Valtonen.

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