The Catch 22 of Psychiatry – what’s wrong with calling depression an illness, but the issue with treating it as if it isn’t

“You’re too young to be depressed” – a saying I’ve heard far too many times when disclosing my experiences at university to my peers. Depression (or any non-normative health issue), I have come to realise, is not something that can be talked about objectively. It’s an individual experience which has complete relevance to the person who has gone through it. Thus, what this all equals to – is a problem with defining depression as an illness, particularly when considering the undoubtedly horrifying history of how psychiatric patients have been treated, ultimately because of their “diagnoses”.