Gaining/losing weight as marker of clinical depression ?
Q.I have been trying to make. Some of the posters here have been confusing the symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder with the symptoms of the broad category of Clinical Depression with the statement that weight gain is atypical of Clinical Depression. And you repeated the misinformation as though it were a given.
A.If you read carefully what was posted the ~only~ post which alleges that weight gain is atypical of Clinical Depression is that of Maggie's paraphrase of the Merck Manual which I cannot evaluate as she has not produced the exact quote. The other sources refer to MDD. I agree about the categories though. As far as I am concerned the DSM serves mainly to assist in claims for insurance reimbursement and to enable some therapists who work in institutional settings to request approval for a treatment plan. Sorry about your friend. If I hear someone say one more time that they dont think someone is really "ill " because of their physical appearance or the mask they put on to meet the world, I will scream:) It's really rough to deal with a friend who is suicidal. Of course I have my own thoughts about the judgements we make on suicide in general but that's another thread:) Yes, it's been rough. It's not made easier by the fact that I do, philosophically, think suicide is (potentially) a legitimate (if unrecoverably tragic) option for an individual to choose. That makes it harder when the bottom line is that you desperately want someone to make it and yet you see them suffering catastrophic pain for a sustained period. I've been nothing but resolutely anti-suicide to my friend. Yes, she puts on a brave, even sometimes happy face to greet the world. It doesn't tell the world a damn thing. This whole thread is nuts to me, sorta akin to asking "what are the symptoms of happiness?" or saying "she can't be happy; she's too fat/skinny/whatever". Depression, as far as science knows, is not a physical disease. It isn't a 'disease' at all. Yes, people can take a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and feel less depressed, but they could also feel less depressed if they filled their bodies with cocaine (not to say that either is necessarily bad). In fact, the effects of prozac-like drugs on the human body are not disimilar to those of coke. That a medicine like prozac can be effective in changing the effects of sadness doesn't mean that a person who gets a benefit from it is lacking something biochemically any more than the person who self-medicates with cocaine, say, is suffering from a cocaine deficiency when he suddenly feels better after a snootful. Shrinks like to think of mental and emotional 'illnesses' as physical diseases 'cause that way insurance companies will pay them and they get to feel like really important scientists. But, you still can't measure consciousness, there are no blood tests done to show a person "has depression", there are no brain changes. Even if 'depression' were a physical disorder, calling it a 'mental illness' sorta makes me, a 'depressive', mad (I'm a depressive, BTW, who's taken paxil in the past and would do it again if I felt the 'need'). It's an *emotional* thang, not a cognitive one (Beck, et al, aside). 'Depression' isn't something someone *has* any more than a body can *have* happiness. It's just an aspect of some people's personalities--and medicalizing that is patronizing, leads to the conclusion that people who have "mental illness" -- ahem-- aren't responsible for their behavior, makes a lot of shrinks and pharmaceutical companies rich, and stuffs people into boxes with nice little labels on them. It also causes threads like this one (ha).
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