What is Depression
In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the terms “depression” or “depressed” refer to sadness and other related emotions and behaviors. It can be thought of as either a disease or a syndrome.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) states that a depressed mood is often reported as feeling sad, helpless, and hopeless. In traditional colloquy, “depressed” is often synonymous with “sad” but both clinical depression and non-clinical depression can also refer to a conglomeration of more than one feeling.
Biological Influence
In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the terms “depression” or “depressed” refer to sadness and other related emotions and behaviors. It can be thought of as either a disease or a syndrome.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) states that a depressed mood is often reported as feeling sad, helpless, and hopeless. In traditional colloquy, “depressed” is often synonymous with “sad” but both clinical depression and non-clinical depression can also refer to a conglomeration of more than one feeling.
Biological Influence
Biological influences of depression are varied, but may relate to malnutrition, heredity, hormones, seasons, stress, illness, drug or alcohol use, neurotransmitter malfunction, long-term exposure to dampness and mold, back injury, and to aerosol exposure.
There are also correlations between long term sleep difficulties and depression. Up to 90 percent of patients with depression are found to have sleep difficulties around the world.
Mechanism of adaptation
While a depressed mood is usually referred to as negative, it can sometimes be subtly beneficial in helping a person adapt to circumstances. For example, physical illness, such as influenza, can lead to feelings of psychological malaise and depression that seem, at first, only to compound an already unpleasant situation.
However, the experience of depression, or feeling “down,” often results in physical inertia, which leads to the compulsion to rest. The fleeting helplessness and immobility of the physically ill may also serve to elicit care from others.”
Milder depression has been associated with what has been called depressive realism, or the “sadder-but-wiser” effect, a view of the world that is relatively undistorted by positive biases.
Types of Depression
1. Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. It is a disabling condition which adversely affects a person’s family, work or school life, sleeping and eating habits, and general health.
The most common time of onset is between the ages of 30 and 40 years, with a later peak between 50 and 60 years. Major depression is reported about twice as frequently in women as in men, although men are at higher risk for committing suicide.
2. Dysthymia
Dysthymia is a type of low-grade depression. As one of the two chief forms of clinical depression, it usually has fewer or less serious symptoms than major depression but lasts longer.
Harvard Health Publications says, “at least three-quarters of patients with dysthymia also have a chronic physical illness or another psychiatric disorder such as one of the anxiety disorders, drug addiction or alcoholism”.
The Primary Care Journal says that dysthymia “affects approximately three percent of the population and is associated with significant functional impairment”.
3. Bipolar Disorder
Also known as manic depression, manic depressive disorder or bipolar affective disorder, it is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania.
Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time.
Genetic factors contribute substantially to the likelihood of developing bipolar disorder, and environmental factors are also implicated. Bipolar disorder is often treated with mood stabilizer medications, and sometimes other psychiatric drugs.
4. Cyclothymia
It is a mood disorder and a form of bipolar disorder. It is defined in the bipolar spectrum. Specifically, this disorder is a milder form of bipolar II disorder consisting of recurrent mood disturbances between hypomania and dysthymic mood. A single episode of hypomania is sufficient to diagnose cyclothymic disorder; however, most individuals also have disthymic periods.
The diagnosis of cyclothymic disorder is never made when there is a history of mania or major depressive episode or mixed episode. The lifetime prevalence of cyclothymic disorder is 0.4-1 percent. The rate appears equal in men or women, though women more often seek treatment.
5. Bulimia Nervosa
This is an eating disorder characterized by recurrent binge eating, followed by compensatory behaviors. The most common form – practiced by more than 75 percent of people with bulimia nervosa – is self-induced vomiting, sometimes called purging; fasting, the use of laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and over exercising are also common.
6. Anorexia Nervosa:
It is a psychiatric illness that describes an eating disorder characterized by extremely low body weight and body image distortion with an obsessive fear of gaining weight.
Individuals with anorexia nervosa are known to control body weight commonly through the means of voluntary starvation, excessive exercise, or other weight control measures such as diet pills or diuretic drugs.
While the condition primarily affects adolescent females, approximately 10 percent of people with the diagnosis are male. Anorexia nervosa, involving neurobiological, psychological and sociological components, is a complex condition that can lead to death in the most severe cases.
7. Schizoaffective Disorder
It is a psychiatric diagnosis. It describes an illness that is defined by recurring episodes of mood disorder and psychosis. The disorder usually begins in early adulthood and is rarely diagnosed in childhood (prior to age 13).
Despite the greater variety of symptoms, the illness course is more episodic and has an overall more favorable outcome than schizophrenia.
8. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
This is also known as winter depression or winter blues, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter or, less frequently, in the summer, repeatedly, year after year.
There are many different treatments for classic (winter-based) seasonal affective disorder, including light therapies with bright lights, anti-depression medication, ionized-air administration, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and carefully timed supplementation of the hormone melatonin.
9. Adjustment Disorder (with depressed mood)
A classification of mental disorder, this is a psychological response from an identifiable stressor or group of stressors that causes significant emotional or behavioral symptoms that does not meet criteria for more specific disorders.
The condition is different from anxiety disorder which lacks the presence of a stressor, or post-traumatic disorder and acute stress disorder which usually are associated with a more intense stressor.
Diagnosis of adjustment disorder is quite common; there have been reports of it being a common and serious condition among adolescents and it has estimated incidences of 5-21 percent in psychiatric consultation services for adults. In clinical samples of adults, women are given the diagnosis twice as often as men.
10. Postanal Depression
Also called postnatal depression, it is a form of clinical depression which can affect women, and less frequently men, after childbirth. Studies report prevalence rates among women from 5 percent to 25 percent, but methodological differences among the studies make the actual prevalence rate unclear.
*Content from Wikipedia was used while writing this article