Depress by Numbers
This article aims to review the status and role of a quantitative scale for assessing the therapeutic effects of antidepressants. This scale, known as HAM-D (Hamilton Scale), plays a central role in medical practices, standards of care, health policy and finally the concepts of depression. While examining the social and scientific conditions, explaining the centrality and importance of this scale, the article details the consequences of the uses of it. The scale shapes the concept of depression by providing a one-dimensional representation, an almost operational and performative definition. Digitizing the depression offers antidepressants market participants the ability to “stage the number” which significantly contributes to the fact that treated patients with these molecules are far more numerous than what logically would allow the characteristics of those on which the (relative) clinical efficacy of antidepressants has been shown.