Abstract
‘Depression: A Global Crisis’, published by the World Health Organization in 2012, provides alarming figures about the prevalence of depression at present and in the future. This chapter discusses similar impressive results provided by successive studies, which also confirm the substantial contribution of depression to the global burden of disease . In these studies depression is diagnosed following the criteria for major depressive disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association . At the same time, authoritative researchers have repeatedly stressed that, when facing adverse life conditions a psychological response of sadness is normal, and its absence would be pathological. The current diagnostic criteria do not discriminate between normal and pathological states, and this leads to the unreal apparent epidemic of depression
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn’t organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
Ivan Illich
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Giraldi, T. (2017). The Mental Disorder Epidemic. In: Unhappiness, Sadness and 'Depression'. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57657-2_4
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