THE loss of life deemed attributable to depression has been cut by half in new government statistics after a change to the counting method which a leading expert says forms part of a systematic effort to downplay the mental illness toll.
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In 2006 suicide was ranked second only to heart disease in the number of potential years of life lost to a range of chronic diseases - on the basis that much suicide is linked to depression.
But in 2007 figures, released today, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has substituted depression for suicide, pushing the category down the ranking - below lung cancer and on a par with bowel cancer.
The figures show 53,965 years of life were collectively lost to suicide in 2006, and 27,291 to depression in 2007. Although relatively few people end their own lives, the disproportionate number of young people who do so explains suicide's large contribution to the total number of years of life lost.
A senior data analyst at the institute, Karen Bishop, said the new calculation was based on earlier research which suggested 42 per cent of male and 53 per cent of female suicides were triggered by depression. Others were the result of different illnesses or episodes of despair unrelated to depression.
Ms Bishop defended the adjustment, saying it was necessary because causes of death are classified according to international standards - which do not include depression - and the institute wanted to assess the relative impact of all long-term diseases on loss of life.
But the executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney, Ian Hickie, said the figures understated the deadliness of depression.
Government statistics were ''constantly underrating the contribution of depression to preventable deaths'', he said, and ''random decisions to change the metric'' resulted in a lack of solid figures that could be monitored over time and used to plan health services.
He cited delays earlier this year in the release of suicide numbers by the Bureau of Statistics as evidence of the same trend, and called for a consistent national collection of mental health data.
Professor Hickie said depression's contribution to early death was much higher than even the rising suicide rate suggested because it raised the risk of heart disease, accidents and drug and alcohol abuse, which in turn caused loss of life.
A professor of global health at the University of Queensland, Alan Lopez, said he understood why the institute wished to narrow down the suicide statistics into those caused by depression, but the resulting figures were not strictly comparable with those for other chronic diseases in the ranking.
While heart disease and cancer directly caused death, most of depression's impact was indirect, as it raised the likelihood of dying from other causes.
''They are mixing two concepts,'' Professor Lopez said.
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