Not to diminish the discussion, but you remind me of the skit from The Life of Brian.. Brian: You've got to think for yourselves, your all individuals. Crowd:

Not to diminish the discussion, but you remind me of the skit from The Life of Brian.. Brian: You've got to think for yourselves, your all individuals. Crowd: Yes we are all individuals. It seems to me that medicine (and patients) seem to want a nice neat label to put on what is affecting them, then they can look up the label and fit it to a nice neat solution. Unfortunately as you describe we are all individuals, especially when it comes to perception of feelings and experience and even those are not static, something as simple as a disturbed night sleep can dramatically impact somebodies mood. How the heck is medicine supposed to deal with all those variables and come up with a definitive "this works" when presented with a mental health issue. Society expects simple solutions to problems. Dark -> turn on light. Broken leg -> apply traction, apply cast, prescribe pain killers. Patient depressed -> ???? Your average GP has about 15 minutes to provide a solution to the patient, how in that amount of time can they discover that: the patient has recently had a messy break up, haven't been sleeping or eating properly, the cat was run over by the neighbour and they have been working far too much. Oh, and the patient would like to be prescribed a pill that will just fix it all. Good luck with that.