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Doctors are over-diagnosing depression - and issuing drugs people don't need |
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Written by Jessica Smith
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Tuesday, 11 August 2009 |
If you think you have depression because your family doctor diagnosed you, the chances are you don’t
General practitioners are misdiagnosing depression so dramatically
that three times the number of people being diagnosed don’t have the
condition – and are being given powerful antidepressants unnecessarily.
But
doctors could also be missing up to half of all cases of clinical
depression, says Dr Alex Mitchell and his colleagues from the
University of Leicester, who re-examined 41 trials into depression
diagnosis.
The bottom line is that doctors just aren’t
qualified to accurately diagnose and identify cases of clinical
depression. And when they do get it wrong and diagnose non-existent
cases, the patient is ending up with powerful antidepressants that
could be causing a range of side effects from loss of speech to
depression itself.
But it’s not just doctors at fault,
says Mitchell. Other health professionals – and even hospital
specialists – are also getting it wrong. When in doubt, clinicians
often schedule a second appointment, something that general
practitioners might also consider doing before reaching for their
prescription pad
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