The number of depression patients in China is large, but before the 1980s, psychologists in China did not have a deep enough understanding of the diagnosis of depression, and their grasp of the concept of depressive illness was so strict that the prevalence of depression was always thought to be low. After entering the 21st century, with the deepening of the medical community’s understanding of depression and the gradual attention paid to mental health, people gradually discovered that depressed people are not as few as we thought, and that depressed people actually exist commonly around us. Scientists have also found a pattern from many research data: the incidence of depression is increasing year by year, and the gap between the prevalence of depression in China and that in Europe and the United States is gradually narrowing. Depression has become a common psychological disorder that cannot be ignored and poses a serious risk to people’s mental and physical health. Depression can significantly affect the mental and physical health of patients. Patients’ work, study, daily life and social interactions are significantly affected. They often cannot communicate normally with others, their ability to work and study is reduced, and it also often causes disharmony in family and marital life. The economic loss due to depression is also quite significant. Patients have to make repeated visits to medical institutions, which not only increases the burden on medical institutions, but also increases medical expenses. In addition, depression causes patients to have a reduced ability to work, and often take sick leave or mine work. According to information from the United States alone in the 1990s, the resulting loss is more than $40 billion per year. It is difficult to describe the pain that depression causes to the patient and his or her family. What’s more, depression is a life-threatening illness, with 67% of depressed people having suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and 15% to 20% of depressed people eventually succeeding in taking their own lives. In early 2007, the Beijing Psychological Crisis Research and Intervention Center released a report showing that suicide is the fifth leading cause of death in China, and the leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 34. Every year, 287,000 people die by suicide in China, and 2 million people attempt suicide. Chinese people’s suicide characteristics: 63% have psychological disorders, of which 80% of suicides suffer from depression. However, only 9% have been seen by a hospital psychiatrist. Depression is very common and harmful, but the corresponding low rate of diagnosis, recognition and treatment of depression is low. Many depressed patients and their families have a strong sense of stigma, believing that once they are diagnosed with depression, they will be labeled as mentally ill and therefore resist going to the hospital for treatment. In fact, depression is like an ordinary disease, just like an emotional cold, and the effect is usually more satisfactory after standard treatment. There are also patients who believe that their depressive symptoms are not a disease, but simply a matter of ideology, or that their willpower is not strong enough, hoping to ease depression through their own adjustment. In fact, the symptoms of typical depression are difficult to control by oneself, just like having a high fever from pneumonia, which cannot be cured just by drinking more water and getting good rest. Depression requires prompt access to antidepressant medication as well as psychotherapy. Because patients with depressive disorders often have a variety of physical discomfort, such as various pains, nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort and other gastrointestinal symptoms, and chest tightness and breathlessness and other cardiovascular symptoms, and because patients and their families have low knowledge of depression, patients often first choose the internal medicine department and other departments in general hospitals, and few patients seek timely consultation in the psychology/psychosomatic medicine department. Patients with depression are often seen in general hospitals, but they are often misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed because of the low recognition rate of depression by non-psychiatrists/psychosomatic physicians. As a result, more than 90% of depressed patients do not receive timely, effective and standardized treatment. Therefore, it is very important to improve the knowledge of the general public about depression and to improve the recognition rate of depression by non-specialist physicians in general hospitals for the diagnosis and treatment of depression.