Study Reveals Widespread Misinformation About Depression

A current Finnish research reveals that individuals are typically given deceptive details about despair, making it more durable for them to grasp the causes of their misery.

The researchers level out that almost all psychiatric diagnoses, together with despair, are purely descriptive and don’t clarify the causes of signs. Despite this, despair is often mentioned as a dysfunction that causes low temper and different signs, which the researchers describe as round reasoning. This false impression complicates individuals’s understanding of their psychological well being.

“Depression should be considered as a diagnosis similar to a headache. Both are medical diagnoses, but neither explains what causes the symptoms. Like a headache, depression is a description of a problem that can have many different causes. A diagnosis of depression does not explain the cause of depressed mood any more than a diagnosis of headaches explains the cause of pain in the head,”

explains Jani Kajanoja, a postdoctoral researcher and psychiatrist on the University of Turku in Finland.

A research by the University of Turku and the University of the Arts Helsinki examined data on despair from main worldwide well being organizations, together with the WHO, APA, NHS, and high universities like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. These organizations typically portrayed despair as a dysfunction that causes signs, which is deceptive. None of them offered despair precisely as a pure description of signs.

“Presenting depression as a uniform disorder that causes depressive symptoms is circular reasoning that blurs our understanding of the nature of mental health problems and makes it harder for people to understand their distress,”

says Kajanoja.

The researchers counsel that this concern might stem from a cognitive bias the place individuals are inclined to see a analysis as an evidence. “It is important for professionals not to reinforce this misconception with their communication, and instead help people to understand their condition,” says Professor and Neuropsychologist Jussi Valtonen from the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Learn extra about despair right here.