When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve the dimensional view spuriously connecting one depressive condition with another, and to assume that separate or relatively independent conditions exist, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that we should declare cause which impel us to argue for such separation.

We hold the following truths to be self-evident – that the depressive disorders are not all equal and that those endowed by their creator to enjoy the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, are also entitled to a more sophisticated assessment and management model if they develop a depressive condition. We further declare that, as the current model of depression is destructive to that objective, it is the right of the people to expose its limitations, criticise it, and pour scorn on its quality of explanatory power. Prudence, indeed, dictates that DSM and ICD models long established should not be changed for light and transient causes but, all experience has shown, organisations are more disposed to continue, despite the associated sufferable nonsense, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they have become accustomed. […]