Hacker News Reader

I’ve never been sure why it’s treated as a disease rather than a symptom. It’s like saying someone with a high temperature is suffering from fever. Which is nice and descriptive and treatable with the right medications, but does nothing to describe the underlying cause.

View on HN

Lots of what we now consider symptoms were thought of as diseases until the underlying problem was better understood. It wasn’t that long ago that your fever example was how people thought. The fever was the disease regardless of the unknown underlying cause.

That depression is considered a disease by itself and not a symptom of many, possibly related, problems suggests how little we understand it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com