The medicalisation of misery: A critical realist analysis of the concept of depression

Richard P. Bentall

223 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Mental Health

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Mental Health and Psychiatry Psychology and Mental Health Critical Realism in Sociology

Abstract

This paper will explore some difficulties with the concept of depression from the perspective of critical realism. We have three aims. First, we will describe the variable, and sometimes incommensurable, ways in which the diagnosis of depression has been defined and discussed in professional mental health texts. Secondly, we will examine this confusion in relation to historical and cross-cultural work on emotions and distress. Thirdly, we will provide two case studies from social science which reveal the limitations of conventional approaches to depression - the research of George Brown and Lyn Abramson and their co-workers.

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References

1961An Inventory for Measuring Depression 1979Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability.1998The Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.): the development and validation of a structured diagnostic psychiatric interview for DSM-IV and ICD-10 1980A circumplex model of affect.2012Cognitive Therapy for Depression 1994Guidelines, criteria, and rules of thumb for evaluating normed and standardized assessment instruments in psychology.1978Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation.1975Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death

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2006'Justifiable depression': how primary care professionals and patients view late-life depression? a qualitative study 2010Are We Medicalizing Women’s Misery? A Critical Review of Women’s Higher Rates of Reported Depression 2007The survival of psychiatric diagnosis 2001Experiencing depression, experiencing the depressed: The separate worlds of patients and doctors 2011Choosing a Qualitative Research Method

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