How Everyone Became Depressed

University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine Professor Edward Shorter (who years ago sold me a used motorcycle) has written a very important book about the nature, mis- and over-diagnosis of depression. How Everyone Became Depressed is available at Amazon and in bookstores.

The stock phrase that “no biological tests exist in psychiatry” has become a mantra, one of those pieces of conventional wisdom that ensures the field remains “on the couch,” dependent for clinical data on what the patient says. Just imagine cardiology dependent on patients’ verbal accounts of their chest pain. “Hurts here, doc.” Hmmmm, is it heartburn or a heart attack?

The claim of “no biological tests” is so universally made that non-specialists imagine that it must be true. But it’s not. It’s false.

This is a must read series of articles on the book by Ned Shorter in Psychology Today.

It includes topics like The DSM System: How it Really Works  and

Psychiatry and Mass Murder