Clinical depression, a claimed medical illness; terms used interchangeably; is clinical depression a specific form of depression?; what the term “clinical” typically implies; what the term “clinical” conjures up in our minds; how the term “clinical depression” serves society’s appointed experts; beneath the surface, another picture emerges; what medical textbooks say – or don’t – about “clinical depression”; putting “clinical depression” to the test; bursting the bubble of “clinical depression”; medicalising unhappiness; “a medical intrusion into private emotions”; the “concept” of “clinical depression”; what happens when two courageous Irish researchers test the status quo, the prevailing “wisdom”; annihilating the messenger; applying scientific principles to the concept of “clinical depression”; “they doth protest too much” (William Shakespeare).