Mind Hacks points us to a recent arti­cle in Psy­chi­atric News argu­ing that the cur­rent def­i­n­i­tion of ‘major depres­sion’ has led to mis­di­ag­noses of ‘nor­mal sad­ness’.

They argue that the diag­no­sis con­tains no qual­i­fi­ca­tions about whether the reac­tion is appro­pri­ate in the con­text of the person’s life, mean­ing that peo­ple who have suf­fered unem­ploy­ment, rela­tion­ship break up or other forms of per­sonal tragedy are con­sid­ered equally as ‘men­tally ill’ as peo­ple who have sim­i­lar mood dis­tur­bances but with­out a spe­cific trigger.

This reminded me of the Holmes and Rahe list of stress­ful life events. With a score of 162, my risk of ill­ness is ‘moderate’.