The medicalization of suffering and the overdiagnosis of depression

Abstract

The use of diagnostic manuals and the statistical effort to catalog mental illnesses and disorders have been the subject of reflection for various health and social science researchers. Although there is an effort to universalize and transculturalise psychodiagnostic categories, there is also a need to abandon an exclusively biological model, giving way to a cultural understanding of the manifestations of psychological suffering. Depression has been treated as an epidemic by a variety of international health actors, leading to an exponential increase in pharmacological prescriptions and significant costs for health systems. Contrary to this warning, a substantial body of theory suggests a global trend towards the medicalization of human suffering in the experience of depression, resulting in overdiagnosis of the condition that has adverse consequences for users of health services. Based on an ethical, methodological, and scientific concern to promote critical science and good clinical practice, this essay seeks to discuss the factors that contribute to shaping the process of medicalizing depression, how the diagnosed individual can be decentralized from their experience, and how the processes of formulating a diagnosis and clinical intervention are influenced by theoretical, economic, social, political and circumstantial factors, leading to individualization of social and contextual problems.