Patients with MD are reluctant to associate their physical symptoms with an affective disorder and refuse mental health care. As a rule, these patients attribute their disturbances to physical illness, seek medical care for them, and report only somatic complaints to their physicians, with the consequence that many of such depressions are not recognized or are misdiagnosed and mistreated Estimates of depressed patients who are correctly identified and treated range from 5% to 60%. Data show that about 10% of people who consult a physician for any reason, originally has affective disorders disguised by physical symptoms. Official diagnostic status
Current classifications: ICD-10 and DSM-5  do not contain the term "masked depression". Some Ukrainian psychiatrists claim that MD is to be qualified as "depression with somatic symptoms" in the ICD-10 (F 3x.01). This means that those who struggle with masked depression often have more physical symptoms such as back pain, abdominal pain, headaches, and even pain during sexual activity or painful periods. For those with more clinical depression, while they still may have physical symptoms, their symptoms are usually more mental or emotional. This includes feelings of helplessness, extreme and/or persisting sadness, numbness, tiredness, drowsiness, exhaustion, and even suicidal thoughts or feelings. Diagnostic criteria
Affective disorders in patients with MD can only be detected by means of a clinician-administered diagnostic interview. : 408 : 576  Organic exclusion rules and other criteria are used in making the diagnosis of MD.
: 185–188  Some physical symptoms of masked depression include general aches, pains including headache, backache, musculoskeletal aches, and other nonpainful symptoms such as changes in appetite and libido, lack of energy, sleep disturbance, dizziness, palpitations, dyspnea, and gastrointestinal tract disturbances. See also
Somatisation
Somatoform disorder

References
External links
Masked depression // The Free Dictionary