A Examination of Available Online Resources That Provide Information About 'Signs of Depression' and How They Are Intended to Make Money from Those Who Are in Distress.

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by: JosephBurgo
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Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 Time: 10:00 PM
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There's a vast quantity of psychiatric information to be found on the Internet, most of it repetitive and shallow, recycled from one website to the next. For example, many sites offer a list of the ten most frequently displayed signs of depression, borrowed almost word-for-word from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, a diagnosis guide used by mental health professionals to assign labels to patients in order that insurance carriers will reimburse the cost of therapy. Such lists are common in the DSM-IV for many different diagnoses; to qualify for the label, you have to fit X number of the "diagnositic criteria," as they're referred to in the mental health field.

Just about every mental health service provider who has to chart and do business with insurance companies owns a copy of the DSM-IV. So why are there sites offering this information? As it's not for the therapist who already knows the diagnostic critera or has them readily available on the bookshelf, who is it for? Clearly, it's for depressed men and women in search of help, or parents concerned that their teenaged daughter is depressed, or possibly someone worried that a husband or father may be depressed. You might be surprised to learned that "10 signs of depression" is a frequently searched phase on Google.

Okay, so you search for "signs of depression" and you hit upon one of these websites with its list of signs. What precisely have you learned? I suppose there are people who aren't sure if they really are depressed, or if a loved one is depressed; this list may confirm a suspicion. Now what? Many of these websites offer the same old information concerning negative self-statements, positive affirmations and biochemical imbalances; a few might offer something of value, but the vast majority are COMMERCIAL sites meant to sell you something -- online therapy, for example -- or to induce you to click on banner ads so the website owner can earn revenue. The aim of most of these websites isn't to furnish anything of genuine value, but to lure troubled people in order to profit from their distress.

Maybe I sound cynical. In all fairness, a therapist has to earn a living just like any other professional; the only way you can do so is if you have patients, and advertising is an professionaly accepted method for letting people know about your practice. I don't have a quarrel with the advertising; What I find offensive is that these sites offer almost nothing of real value. Their primary goal is to appear on search engines when suffering individuals enter certain phrases related to their pain into a search box. If you suspect a loved one is in trouble, or if you yourself are suffering, you may search for "10 signs of depression", "signs of depression in men" or simply "signs of depression" to discover more. More than 6,000 people each day search those three terms alone.


If you'relucky, you might discover a site that tries to help you learn what depression MEANS, the "why" of depression, but to find a resource that goes beyond negative self-statements and low serotonin levels is rare. The search for "meaning" is weak in my profession at present, largely because long-term psychotherapy (the "talking cure") is very expensive and out of favor. We live in a society that wants quick and easy answers. Short-term treatments informed by cognitive behavioral theories, along with psychotropic drugs, are the preferred choice of the public in addition to the insurance providers. Those insurers insist that the mental health professional to have a concise diagnosis for the insured' they expect a set of goals for psychotherapy and an expeditious plan for how to achieve those goals, with documented progress along the way.

Extended, meandering and challenging voyage of self-discovery, with no well-defined path, doesn't fit this model. In my experience, that's the only way to learn anything of genuine and lasting value about those signs of depression and how you came to exhibit them. You won't discover your unique and personal reasons for being depressed by searching for '10 signs of depression in men', or on any of the sites your search results will display.

About the Author

Joseph Burgo PhD writes a psychotherapy blog called After Psychotherapy, for individuals who want to continue to grow and learn more about themselves and their relationships after psychotherapy ends.