Does depression exist?
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It’s not as strange a question as it might sound. Does depression exist? I don’t mean to imply that those with depression should just ‘pull themselves together’: of course depression symptoms exist (and are sometimes life-ruining). And of course those symptoms often overlap with each other, which certainly implies that there’s a common cause. But is there a thing we can point to in someone’s brain – or some identifiable part of their psychology – that’s called ‘depression’?
In their understandable desire to get on with trials that might help people who are suffering, many researchers have sidestepped the question of what depression actually is. Instead, they’ve simply agreed on a definition and stuck to it. The Beck Depression Inventory is a questionnaire routinely used to diagnose and define depression: if you’ve ever spoken to your GP about feeling low, you might have come across it. It’s named after Aaron Beck, one of the most important figures in the history of psychiatry (who d...
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