A surprisingly high percentage of UK students are depending on medication commonly known as ‘antidepressants,’ and according to statistics, Norwich is a highly prescribed area of the UK.
Antidepressant prescriptions have trebled since 1998; however this number has risen at a much faster pace than the number of patients being diagnosed with depression, indicating pills may be distributed too generously. Some general practitioners have admitted to over-prescribing antidepressants simply due to the fact that they do not have sufficient time to analyse each case, highlighting misdiagnosis and misperscription as largely unaddressed issues in England today.
Unfortunately in modern society the term ‘depression’ is overused and misused too frequently, and the difference between depression and sadness is often unclear. Many face times when they are lonely, sad or disappointed. The worry is when these feelings are falsely self-diagnosed as depression and therefore can lead to misperscription by doctors.
Clinical depression is a real illness with real symptoms, but it seems to have lost its credibility due to too many people, particularly students, being misdiagnosed. The NHS describes depression as ‘more than simply feeling unhappy or fed up for a few days’ and highlights a need to differentiate it from sadness or grief. Of course many of the symptoms overlap, including loss of sleep, a change of appetite, feeling tearful and low self-esteem; however, a key way of distinguishing the two can be by the longevity of the symptoms. Sadness is temporary, lasting days or weeks, whereas depression is a state of mind that lasts months or years. Those who are in a state of sadness will find their feelings come and go whereas those who are clinically depressed find their negative state of mind is constant and unfaltering.
A key contributory factor to the misdiagnosis of depression amongst students is the internet. Google and other search engines are used constantly throughout university life to research symptoms without having to trudge across campus to the health centre. The issue with this tactic is the vast amount of illnesses documented online. If you type in your symptoms, chances are it will tell you that you have a terminal illness. Sure enough, if you type the symptoms of sadness, tiredness and weight loss into a search engine, your laptop will tell you that you are clinically depressed. The real problem is that people often believe it without question.
Too many students jump to the conclusion that they are depressed and immediately turn to medication as a solution, creating a dependency on pills to keep them happy. Because these antidepressants are so easy to get hold of, self-diagnosis can be incredibly dangerous without proper understanding of the subject. Take a female student who has just been through a breakup for example: She is unable to sleep, she has lost some weight, she is feeling unsociable, she has puffy eyes from crying, and she is stressed from overanalysing every aspect of her relationship. She could walk into the health centre tomorrow, describe her symptoms of sadness and leave via the pharmacy laden with antidepressants. Meanwhile, these pills can cause worsening depression, anxiety, aggression, violence and suicidal thoughts.
Although antidepressants are incredibly beneficial for those who are clinically depressed, there are more natural, healthier solutions available to help restore the physical and emotional state of individuals who are misdiagnosed that don’t create greater risks. These include exercise, eating healthily and getting enough sleep.