As many as one out of every four people told they have depression could, in fact, be reacting normally to some of life's more troubling times.

That's the finding of a new study this week, published in The Archives of General Psychiatry, based on a study of 8,000 people.

According to the research, 25 per cent of people diagnosed with depression were found to be simply struggling with a normal reaction to a recent emotional blow, such a death of a family member, a divorce or a job loss.

Extended periods of depression-like symptoms are common in people who have been through a life stress and don't necessarily constitute illness, the study concluded.

"Medication in these cases is unwarranted, and in the case of teenagers downright dangerous," says board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist A. B. Curtiss. People should turn instead to physical exercise and cognitive behavioral methods to build confidence and coping skills in handling life's crises.

The researchers based their findings on a national survey of 8,098 people. They found that those who had experienced a variety of stressful events frequently had prolonged periods in which they reported many symptoms of depression. Only a fraction, however, had severe symptoms that could be classified as clinical depression, the researchers said.

Patients are currently diagnosed as clinically depressed based on whether they suffer a number of identified symptoms, including fatigue, insomnia and suicidal thoughts.

The diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists says that anyone who suffers from at least five such symptoms for as little as two weeks may be clinically depressed.

Medicating many of the patients going through normal periods of grief is unnecessary, suggests the study. Supportive therapy on the other hand, can be more appropriate and helpful and might keep a person from going on to develop full-blown depression.

Lead author Dr. Jerome C.Wakefield, insists that the apparent epidemic of depression is caused by the psychiatric profession reclassifying normal human sadness as a medical illness that can be cured with drugs.

"The cost of not looking at context is you think anyone who comes under this diagnosis has a biological disorder, so should more or less automatically get antidepressant medication, and everything else is superfluous," said Wakefield, who studies the conceptual foundations of psychiatry. "There is a trend to treat people in this somewhat mechanized way."

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, approximately eight per cent of adult Canadians will experience major depression at some time in their lives.

A recent Ipsos Reid telephone poll on depression in the workplace found that 20 per cent in Canada and 21 per cent in the U.S. believe they're either clinically depressed or they think they are but never had it properly diagnosed.