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“It’s Not Just Depression”: The Lazy Diagnosis That Almost Broke Me

By Antonia at Unremarkable Me

Let’s talk about mental health and chronic illness — not the kind of TED Talk platitudes with pastel infographics and yoga poses, but the real, gritty stuff.

Over the past 35 years, I’ve danced with depression and lived in a flatshare with anxiety. A high-functioning kind of struggle — dressed up in designer labels, concealed beneath handbags that cost more than my first car. Shopping was my version of eating feelings. Retail therapy? More like emotional triage.

But something shifted. Slowly, painfully. I started to realise this wasn’t just a mental health story. It wasn’t all in my head — at least not in the way they meant it.

I wasn’t just in denial. I was being dismissed.

Every time I turned up to the GP’s office, symptoms that would’ve warranted blood tests or scans in someone else were reduced to a checkbox marked “depression.” Fatigue? Depression. Pain? Depression. Gut issues? Still depression.

I remember one confrontation vividly. I wasn’t disputing that I was depressed — I was. But it wasn’t causeless or mysterious. It was because I was in relentless pain, because I was unknowingly battling Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Chiari malformation. I said as much. I was calm. Clear. And do you know what I got?

A look.

That glazed, polite, clinical look that says, “We’ve already decided what box you go in.” Followed by:“Take these tablets with food. I’ll check in… maybe.”

No MRI.No referrals.No curiosity.

Just a chemical Band-Aid for a wound they hadn’t even looked at.


When Mental Health Becomes a Scapegoat

What I experienced is something a lot of chronically ill people know intimately. It has a name: diagnostic overshadowing — when physical symptoms are ignored or misattributed to mental illness, especially when you already have a mental health history or diagnosis on file.

It’s lazy.It’s systemic. And it’s dangerous.

Because here’s the truth: mental illness and chronic illness can co-exist — but one doesn’t cancel out the other. You don’t stop checking for broken bones because someone also has anxiety. So why does it happen the minute the patient is complex, female, or “already labelled”?

Want to learn more about diagnostic overshadowing? NHS Parliamentary Report: Diagnostic Overshadowing in Disabled PatientsBMJ Opinion: Stop Misdiagnosing Physical Symptoms as Mental Illness

The Emotional Aftershock

Being gaslit by the very system you’re relying on to help you? That leaves emotional scar tissue. It made me second-guess myself. Downplay symptoms. Stay quiet when I should’ve shouted. I learned to present my pain “palatably,” with a smile and a spreadsheet, hoping to be taken seriously.

That’s the quiet brutality of it. You internalise the neglect. You start to wonder if you are just difficult, dramatic, delusional. Even as your body is screaming otherwise.


So, What Now?

We need to change how the conversation around mental health and chronic illness is framed. That means:

  • Validating complex realities. You can have depression and undiagnosed physical illness. One doesn’t excuse ignoring the other.

  • Training doctors to hold both truths. Mental health awareness should empower investigation, not shortcut it.

  • Giving patients space to tell their full story. Without being reduced to a single diagnosis or one-size-fits-all fix.

Because here's the thing: I’m not against antidepressants. I’m against them being used as a replacement for medical curiosity. I’m against a system that would rather medicate your despair than understand its source.


We’re Not Imagining It — You’re Just Not Listening

I spent years being told it was “all in my head.” And in a way, it was — because EDS and Chiari were quietly affecting my brainstem and nervous system the whole time. But not in the way they meant.

So no — I wasn’t in denial. I was in survival mode.

And now? Now I speak up — not just for me, but for every person who’s walked out of a GP’s office feeling smaller, dismissed, and dangerously unheard.

We need a healthcare system that doesn’t flinch when the answer isn’t simple. That doesn’t prescribe silence. That stops pathologising complexity as inconvenience.

If you’ve ever been told your illness is “just anxiety,” “just depression,” or “just stress,” know this:

There’s nothing just about it.And there’s nothing wrong with demanding more.


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