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Depression or 'normal sadness?'

E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Elizabeth Cooney September 16, 2008 09:58 AM

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Making a distinction between ordinary sadness and clinical depression doesn't help patients, a Tufts professor of psychiatry says in an essay in today's New York Times.

Dr. Ronald Pies of Tufts University School of Medicine debates criticism that says psychiatry in recent years has medicalized normal sadness, increasing depression diagnoses and prescriptions for drugs to treat it. He says it's not so simple. The incidence of depression hasn't changed very much in recent decades, isolating the cause of depression isn't easy, and deciding when sadness crosses the line into a disorder hasn't become clear, he says.

"Most psychiatrists believe that undertreatment of severe depression is a more pressing problem than overtreatment of 'normal sadness,' " he writes.

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White Coat Notes covers the latest from the health care industry, hospitals, doctors offices, labs, insurers, and the corridors of government. Chelsea Conaboy previously covered health care for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write her at cconaboy@boston.com. Follow her on Twitter: @cconaboy.

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