To think we medicalise the normal throes of life?

[OneHonestSquid]

It feels like nowadays, anyone’s who’s sad about something is instantly labelled as “depressed” and anyone who’s worried about something is “anxious.” It’s like we’ve forgotten that experiencing emotions like sadness or worry is just a natural part of being human.

I get that mental health is important but are we over-diagnosing and medicalising things that used to just be part of life? AIBU to think we might be going a bit too far with these labels? Or is there genuinely a rise in mental health issues that need more attention?

I totally agree

I count actions when I'm really anxious. I have thoughts that I have to do things and if I don't bad things will happen. I've had proper panic attacks when I lost my younger sibling.

Yes I think many feel the need to stick labels on things which are in many cases the normal human experience, behaviours and responses.

I think its so case by case you really can't comment.

No we are not at all.

By "labelled" do you mean "diagnosed by a medical professional" or casually referred to as that?

If you're anxious, you're anxious. It's not weird to call it that. It's unhelpful to conflate that feeling with an actual anxiety disorder... but you seem to be assuming that's what it means?

I think so; life events can make you sad and it doesn’t need to be depression and same with anxiety. I say that after thinking i was “depressed” in the past and then experiencing it in full and recognising how different it is.

I totally agree OP. It's perfectly normal to feel stressed/overwhelmed/anxious but we're teaching our younger generations that they need to be medicated/off school/off work because of it. Life is hard at times and people need to stop living inside their own heads.

No, I have not experienced this with the people I know in life. Those depressed or with anxiety, and diagnosed, experience it to the extent of it being debilitating. I also don’t know on anyone on medication that isn’t otherwise significantly debilitated.

I think it goes further than that. I've worked with people with learning disabilities for over 20 years.

20 years ago I worked alongside them, they stacked shelves and pushed trollies in supermarkets or folded clothes, unloaded boxes from lorries or were a second pair of hands with the local scrap man. Often they were paid below the minimum wage and employers were supported by the government to employ them.

Rightly, it was found to be wrong that they weren't being paid properly but the outcome was that they were no longer employed rather than their pay was increased.

Now I assess them for services while they sit in supported living on benefits with young staff members 'supporting' them scrolling on their phones while the people they support watch TV whole generations of people with a LD diagnosis effectively barred from experiencing all the social and emotional benefits of work and costing th3 state a fortune to support and basically infantilised as a result of their LD.

I don't think I know anyone who has been diagnosed with a mental health disorder who was merely experiencing a temporary set of feelings.

Is that actually common, and how would you even know? I only know about 6 people well enough to know whether a diagnosis sounds accurate or not - I'm not privy to many people's actual mental symptoms.

I think when you've really had anxiety of depression, you recognise the difference. I have to bite my tongue when it's causually thrown around because "it's making me anxious" makes it someone else's problem, "it's making me nervous" makes it a you problem to deal with.

"I can't do this presentation because it's making me anxious" is more likely to get people off the hook than "nervous". I guarantee theyll be told "it's normal to feel nervous" and brushed off. Same with depressed and "it's affecting my mental health" - it's flippant victim mentality.

I agree. I’m waiting on quite a big surgery for a rare condition. A very clear physical condition. My GP keeps trying to push antidepressants on me because ‘obviously your mood is effected’

of course it is. I don’t want to be dealing with this but it is what it is. I doubt you would anyone facing my physical issues who wasn’t upset by is. But I’m not depressed. Upset, sad and scared at times. Sure, but not depressed

But I think this sums it up. Having panic attacks when you lose your sibling is a perfectly normal reaction (and I'm so sorry that has happened to you). It isn't something to be pathologized. I think it is referred to as 'situational depression'. Medication can help you cope with life in the aftermath but your reaction is what most people would experience in a crap situation.

Intrusive thoughts are less 'normal' and yes, counselling can help with that.

But what is being over reacted to is the bumps in the road that everyone has. You don't get the job you wanted or your husband wants to go somewhere else on holiday - these are normal everyday things. You might feel rubbish for a couple of days but then you move on.

I meant more the casual way those terms are thrown around, especially online or in day to day conversations. Of course people can feel anxious or low without having a clinical disorder but I sometimes feel like we jump to pathologising very normal human emotions. I’m not saying real diagnoses aren’t valid, just that we might be overusing the language in ways that blur the lines a bit.

Have you ever tried to get a diagnosis from a specialist for a mental health condition. You know that problem wait ages. Overdiagnosed, my arse. By whom. People cannot even see the right people.

no! Some people have a low emotional threshold just like others have a low pain threshold! You would find it very rare for analgesia to be withheld!

'Depressed' and 'anxious' are just some feelings in the spectrum of emotions we feel. Both are normal.
They are different to diagnosed depression and anxiety. Both conditions affect all aspects of your life, not just specific scenarios.

I do think there is a rise in both the depressed/anxious and clinically depressed/anxiety, as life is just shit now.

I've seen a huge increase of posters claiming 'health anxiety' on MN in the last few years - they're never just worried, it's always more complicated than that.

There was a poster a couple of weeks ago who spent 20 mins on a sunbed and was badly burnt, and said it had triggered her health anxiety. I don't think someone with health anxiety would even think about using a sun bed, the damage to skin is so well know.

I found it particularly irritating as a friend had diagnosed health anxiety, it was crippling, and she needed in-patient care.

I’d agree that most official diagnoses probably aren’t handed out lightly. I guess my post is more about how the language of diagnosis has filtered into everyday conversation. I’m not saying people aren’t struggling but I do wonder if we’ve lost the space to say “I’m just going through a rough patch” without it becoming something medicalised. It’s more of a cultural observation than a critique of the clinical process itself.

On the basis that it took two years to get my teenage DD the help and medication she needed for her anxiety attacks , depression and self harm I'd have to say no.

Now she has had therapy and is taking the anti d meds she has been able to live her life again.

And it wasn't normal life that caused her problems it was adoption trauma , bullying at school and a traumatic illness/near death experience and a chronic health diagnosis requiring intense life long treatment. My poor girl has been through hell and she is still only 16. Enough to make even the toughest person anxious and depressed.

In my area over a quarter of all adults are on anti depressants. My friend’s beloved DH left her out of the blue, and she was understandably devastated. She hadn’t slept for a few nights so she went to see her GP who diagnosed depression and put her on ADs. She wasn’t depressed, she was just reeling from a horrible event. It’s not a ‘disorder’ to be badly affected by awful things.

We’re conditioned by toxic positivity that tells us we should feel happy all the time, and if we don’t then there is something wrong with us.

I’ll preface this by saying I have diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’ve had it a long time. I will always have it. I’ve had countless hours of therapy, a billion different antidepressants, antipsychotics, other more experimental medications and have received the above treatment both as an inpatient and an outpatient. I am in the best place I have been for a very long time, and I feel mostly “normal” the vast majority of the time these days.
This all might come out as a bit of a ramble, so sorry…….

I think this is a by-product of the toxic positivity that’s been pedalled so much in the past decade.

Don't get me wrong, the stigma around mental health being broken is a wonderful thing. I don’t doubt that it’s saved countless lives (including mine) because people no longer feel the same deep shame about needing mental health support that generations before us did.

But I also agree that sometimes it feels like it’s reached a point where the line between an actual mental health disorder and simply feeling a negative emotion has become blurred.
Toxic positivity is an absolute scourge. Social media in particular has fueled the idea that people have to be constantly happy and feeling wonderful all the time and any negative emotion is a problem that needs fixing.
Negative emotions like anger, sadness, anxiety, fear etc all serve a psychological and sometimes a physiological purpose. They are a normal part of being a human. They are how we recognise danger. Those emotions are often the ones that rear their heads when someone is suffering from a mental disorder - diagnosed clinical anxiety or depression for example.
As mental health awareness has become more widespread, I think disorders are thrown around willy nilly. Like it rattles me beyond belief when someone has been mildly frightened and their response in a jokey manner is “Omg you’ll give me PTSD!” or something that would make any normal, healthy human nervous, like public speaking, and someone’s says “Ohhh I’m so anxious, I’m going to need therapy” 🫠
And those attitudes kind of make all the work that’s been done to remove the mental health stigma obsolete because instead of people now hearing “I need mental health support” and thinking “this persons a loony and needs locking up” like they did in that past, people hear that, roll their eyes and think “this person is just being overdramatic”.

Oh God yes.
I have depression and anxiety right now. GP couldn't get me on my way quick enough with a load of pills.
He did the ridiculous depression and anxiety checklist a few times and depending on what I had said would pronounce me better or worse, but without any insight at all into my answers.
But it's not really true. If the circumstances I am in went away my depression and anxiety would go away. And I can't think of anyone who would be coping better than I am. What I am feeling although bloody terrible is perfectly normal. Tbh it would be weird to not feel like I do.

I get you - I think it's important to be clear about the feelings vs a condition where these feelings restrict your life. But your examples of being "anxious" or "depressed" I wouldn't say are medicalising anything.

If you're blurring language to exaggerate or because you fear dealing with normal feelings then yes, that could be an issue.
But being clear and meaningful in one's language doesn't seem to be important

On here posters often say "I can't confront them because I have anxiety" - a sort of way of saying I have anxious feelings about difficult situations (normal) that sounds like you "have" some kind of condition. I think that's themselves exaggerating - not "us" as a society but people that aren't clear on what's normal or what a medical condition actually is.

(I'd say similar to people putting up with ludicrous shit in a relationship, too... perhaps they have lost sight of what's normal)..