Depression: The Shroud of Heterogeneity

Over the past several decades, depression has emerged as a major public health problem. Yet depression has not always represented such a prominent psychiatric condition, and the term depression has harbored different meanings over time. One widely agreed upon way of explaining such variation in what...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCurrent directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 227 - 231
Main Authors Monroe, Scott M., Anderson, Samantha F.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2015
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Public health
psychological disorders
diagnosis
depression
classification
heterogeneity
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Summary:Over the past several decades, depression has emerged as a major public health problem. Yet depression has not always represented such a prominent psychiatric condition, and the term depression has harbored different meanings over time. One widely agreed upon way of explaining such variation in what depression implies has been to describe depression as being heterogeneous. In the present article, depression is examined in relation to different types of heterogeneity, particularly with regard to the concept of a syndrome. The consequences of various meanings of heterogeneity for understanding the nature of depression are then explored. Finally, we speculate on the implications for the future of depression research and practice.
ISSN:0963-7214
1467-8721
DOI:10.1177/0963721414568342