Daily Mail: How the wrong drugs could be causing your depression

From The Daily Mail:
By Lucy Elkins

Feeling worn out? Having trouble getting out of bed each day? Finding it hard deciding what to do with your time? Turn up at your GP's surgery with these symptoms and the chances are you will be diagnosed with depression.

Two million people in Britain are taking antidepressants, yet according to a new book, many of these people aren't mentally ill at all but have been misdiagnosed.

In Beating Stress, Anxiety And Depression, Professor Jane Plant, a leading scientist from University College Hospital in London, and Janet Stephenson, a psychologist at a London hospital, claim the medical profession's approach to mental illness and depression in particular is wrong - with medics often mistaking symptoms of a physical condition for depression.

'A study by an American psychiatrist found that more than 10 per cent of patients diagnosed with mental illness are actually suffering from an underlying physical condition, such as a heart murmur or a mineral deficiency such as calcium or magnesium that causes depression-like symptoms,' says Professor Plant.

Thyroid problems can also cause depression.

Another study found that more than 40 per cent of patients diagnosed as depressed at one medical practice were found to have been taking medication that causes depression as a side effect.

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Posted in: depression,medication,misdiagnosis