Stretching Terms and Missing the Mark in our Mental Health Discourse

.....For example, the concept of depression was once referred to as clinical depression and was “grounded in assessments of severity, duration, and significant functional impairment.” In contrast, depression is now widely used outside of the clinical context, portrayed in media, and commonly used in conversation to describe everyday sadness.

Other scholars also warn that the progressive loosening of mental health concepts in the DSM and in public discourse has and will continuously lead to diagnostic inflation, making it more difficult to differentiate between everyday unhappiness and clinical symptoms. This not only fuels a lucrative drug industry but also drains already scarce mental healthcare resources, leaving those with more severe mental health conditions with unmet needs.....

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Bethany`s Notes: A must read for the week! This is a concern of mine as well...we must be careful to not use phrases that generalize mental illness. Mental illnesses have a specific set of criteria that must be met in order to be diagnosed, from the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual).