Experts attack depression claim

Too many patients are diagnosed with depression when they are merely unhappy, Professor Gordon Parker said.

But Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of SANE, said steering away from diagnosing depression risked ill people committing suicide.

"It is better to risk over-diagnosis than to leave depression untreated," she said.

"One in ten people with severe depression may take their own life."

She added: "Depression can be a complex and challenging condition ranging from feeling low to being so disabled that the person may be unable to get out of bed in the morning, sustain relationships or work.

"It is not surprising that with such a wide range of symptoms, identification varies from one doctor to another."

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Parker, from the University of New South Wales, in Australia, claimed normal emotions were sometimes being treated as illness because the threshold for clinical depression was too low.

He called depression a "catch-all" diagnosis driven by clever marketing that supported a thriving prescription drug industry. There was an over-reliance on anti-depressants, he said.

Under the current diagnosis guidelines, about one in five adults is thought to suffer depression during their lifetime. This costs the UK economy billions in lost productivity and treatment.