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 don't necessarily think we do.

I mean was it normal for an 11 year old to feel depressed?
Was it normal for a 12 year old to self harm (not knowing how what that was or that anyone did it-talking pre internet here).
Was it normal for a 12 year old to try and strangle them self with a school tie in the toilets?

Probably not. But that's what I dealt with, oh and the first suicide attempt at 15?

It annoys me when people generalise and say "oh we are just medicasising normal emotions". Because what I've experienced for the past 27 years of my life, is not in any way normal nor should irbe considered so.

Im a child of the 80s. I existed before the internet even really existed.

There was no social media. Nobody told me that something was wrong with me. I didn't seek it out. In fact tbh my first experience with knowing what the word "depression" meant was taken from a text book in the school library. I just happened to read it (whilst hiding from my bullies) and realise I was experiencing all ofthe symptoms )..I didn't know that just self harm was until my best friend encouraged me to talk to the social.worker who came to school, who explained why it was and that others truffles with it.

She did offer me therapy but due to being under 16 it would have required my parents consent (thought ended up under CAMHS anyway after my suicide attempt)

It's easy to say we are medicalising "normal" emotions but I feel it plays down the seriousness of what many of us experience when younger which as led to a lifetime of mental illness

I've done mental health training with Mind and one very clear point was that we all, often, lack the ability to name and understand the myriad emotions that we all feel. So I disagree that naming emotions - including anxiety etc - is 'pathologising'. I think it's healthier to say 'I've been feeling sad and anxious since my break up' than it is to say 'I've been going through a tough time since my break up'.

That's different to clinical anxiety or depression but recognising emotions and the stressors that could tip those emotions into poor mental health or mental illness (so when feeling anxious becomes a diagnosable anxiety disorder, for instance) is surely more healthy than obfuscating and as a result, not putting in place measures to cope.

It's very difficult to be accepted for assessment/treatment by secondary care services as thresholds are incredibly high, and they are ridiculously underfunded - it's appalling, especially when you need specialist help. But most mental health diagnoses (depression/ anxiety) are given within primary care, by a GP, within a routine ten minute appointment, and antidepressants are almost always offered / prescribed. I have literally never heard of anyone who has gone to see a GP about low mood who has not come out of the room with a diagnosis of depression in their medical notes and an offer of antidepressant medication, regardless of whether the low mood is situational or pathological. I think it's this side of things that people are questioning

I'm questioning the people who self diagnose, who don't say they're worried or nervous about something but that it's 'triggered their anxiety', often as an excuse to avoid a committment or responsibilities, tjough sometimes it's just to sound more complex and interesting.

And I'm increasingly coming across people who are claiming anxiety, or OCD, or ASD without any medical input, without it having much of a negative impact on their lives, but generally allows them to claim special treatment.

I think that many of the self-diagnosed don't actually have the anxiety, OCD and ASD they claim, and this leads to misunderstanding about the need for supports for those people who do have a condition which can benefit from medical support.

You are not being unreasonable.

In the late 90s I was under the care of a psychiatrist. The 90s was a horrible time for people with mental illness; so much stigma, and goodness knows we don't ever want to go back to that.

The stigma needed to be challenged, and so we had lots of much needed awareness raising.

But we have overcorrected to the point where diagnosis has been so normalised that the ups and downs of everyday life are increasingly pathologised as illness. We have lost sight of what mental illness actually looks like.

Yes. Diagnostic appropriation bottlenecks the system so that people with significant impairments are waiting in line for support behind people who believe they have an anxiety disorder because they feel nervous before things like exams/work presentations etc. Normal negative emotions are being conflated with mental illness and it diverts attention and resources away from the people who need it most.

I agree with this. We live so far from what we probably should be living like, right from birth

Yes, I’d agree with this. There’s a big difference between feeling anxious now and then, which is normal, and suffering chronic debilitating anxiety, and I’d say the same about depression having suffered with it. Actual depression is nothing like just ‘being a bit down’ or being sad about a certain thing. I think we have become more aware of mental health problems as a society and I’m so glad the stigma around them is lessening, but I do also think that it has meant some people think that any anxiety or unhappiness at all must mean they have a ‘mental health problem’. I don’t think on the whole that it’s medical experts who are over-medicalising, they usually know what chronic anxiety or depression looks like, but rather it’s more people self-diagnosing themselves

Nope it’s exactly the opposite, serious mental health difficulties are under diagnosed. It’s hard to get a diagnosis of depression- too often it’s dismissed as low mood and things are just left to get steadily worse.

I was diagnosed with PND when DD1 was 9 months old. I was struggling but to this day, I can’t tell if I was actually depressed or just so knackered that I couldn’t function properly.

I was put on antidepressants which I took for a few months.

When our DD2 died sleeping I was put on antidepressants. For normal grief. I think I took them for a few months.

I have been prescribed antidepressants twice and I still don’t think I was ever actually clinically depressed.

I think both doctors and patients should always be mindful of the side effects of medication, but ultimately if the benefits outweigh the negatives then I don't see the problem.

I get awful migraines - I don't think anyone's ever died from a migraine, and probably I could manage them to some extent with lifestyle choices (ie quit my very stressful job) but it suits me better to just take the painkillers.

I mean, it’s the normal human experience to have heart attacks snd high blood pressure when we get to a certain age - it’s the normal human experience for millions of children to die from malaria in hot countries…should we not be medicalising these conditions op?

6 months ago my ds took his own life. I recently had an over 65 health check and the nurse asked me why I wasn't on anti depressants. I said I'm not depressed.
She was adamant I should be " on something ". I take no medication for anything and I think she was amazed at my age there wasn't something wrong with me. I have worked bloody hard over these 6 months to be healthy, exercise and eat well....for me that has helped me enormously. I feel strong physically which has helped me deal with this trauma.

I think both of the OP's statements can simultaneously be true without contradiction. I'd be interested to know - but how you would (or whether you even could) work it out, no idea - how much of what gets described as anxiety and depression is in fact "not sleeping well enough".

I can remember a time when my circumstances were really difficult and I was miserable much of the time. Several well meaning people told me that I must have depression and should see the GP. I couldn't understand the logic of treating something circumstantial as an illness so I didn't.

I had awful anxiety but assumed most people felt like this. It made work difficult and I just didn’t learn things like other people due to it, again affected work. I had adhd and severe social anxiety, only diagnosed late in life. I suspect there are many undiagnosed people out there.

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”.

I agree. We have moved beyond destigmatizing mental illness to trivialising it by applying mental health language to normal emotional experiences. I can't make up my mind if this is caused by lack of resilience or leads to lack of resilience; probably both. The rush to medicate negative emotions never allows people to find out that, for most of us, they pass.

I've noticed that "over diagnosis" has come up in a few, long form interview, podcasts recently so maybe we are moving towards a more measured approach. The people that I have heard interviewed talk about how over diagnosis applies to physical illness too; we can see this when we look at how thresholds for treating blood pressure, cholesterol and "pre diabetes" have been lowered so that many more people are medicated for these things now.

A label means it’s not your fault. And we must never take accountability.

You don't need a diagnosis from a specialist though.
You can self diagnose & self refer to talking therapy using an online questionnaire.
A GP can diagnose & prescribe medication based on a questionnaire.

It’s all in the name of business! The kind doctor says “you’re anxious, depressed, let me prescribe you some pills’. You take the pills and years later you got more problems because them pills are toxic and cause side effects. You then become the patient with more problems to treat. Win, win in the name of business.

Doctors need sick patients to be able to treat and prescribe to get their wages. Drug companies need their drugs prescribed to keep their business running.

I agree that some people do this, copying social media drama queens and influencers and celebrities who are feted as “brave” for talking about their “mental health struggles”
As someone with chronic properly diagnosed mental health conditions it pisses me off hugely because it minimises the problems faced by those with genuine illness.
Terms like OCD have become a trendy catch phrase which people use humorously. I actually had somebody laugh when I told them I have OCD so I explained that I am clinically diagnosed with this very draining condition, it doesn’t just mean I like to keep my house tidy.

The stigma remains - it has to or the field will not survive. It is built on stigma. The diagnosis themselves show the stigma is still alive and kicking.

We never knew anything about mental illness as it was and it hasn't progressed at all today! We have always pathologised normal reactions to situations for hundreds of years.

I agree with you OP.

We live in a world where everyone is desperate to have a label.

It’s why so many people self diagnose as having autism, being non-binary or transgender etc.

I agree with PPs that it’s very good to know these terms and not stigmatise them but I think they are overused and it takes away from the people suffering from the actual conditions.

I do think there is a rise in mental health because life is much more face paced, social media means you’re constantly comparing your life to a fake world and you can’t get away from the bad things going on in the world etc but I also think people have forgotten that it’s normal to feel sad or anxious sometimes.

I know of 2 people who had a loved one die, one was a parent and one was a miscarriage and in both cases they were labelled as depressed and given anti-depressants less than a week after the death.
For me, I would have thought this was still feelings of grief rather than depression and it felt like being clinically depressed was ok but grieving was now stigmatised.

I think it's complicated. I suffer with panic disorder and have panic attacks every night. I'm medicated for it (beta blockers) and they are a game changer. I wouldn't have panic disorder if I wasn't on a 45 week waiting list for my medical care. The NHS is broken and the people working in it (including me!) are powerless.

Yanbu. One of my team went off with "work related stress and work triggered depression" and was off for months, got referred to all sorts of services, medication etc. staggered return to work, lots of time and resources used, welfare meetings, grievances and so on.

The actual reason? They just didn't like their job anymore and expected us to change how we all worked and when we wouldn't they allegedly developed depression.

They left (thank god) and got in touch about 3 months later to apologise for being dramatic about it all and not seeing that it was 'just' they didn't like their job anymore.

Tbf though I got the feeling it was their GP that pushed all this and have seen how quickly GPs are to sign people off with stress, anxiety etc over normal things people should really push through to come out better mentally equipped in future, so I don't think they help matters at all.