Clinical depression

Clinical depression is a health condition of depression with mental and physical components reaching criteria generally accepted by clinicians.

Types of major depression

Major depression is also referred to as major depressive disorder or biochemical, clinical, endogenous, unipolar, or biological depression. It is characterized by a severely depressed mood that persists for at least two weeks. Episodes of depression may start suddenly or slowly and can occur several times through a person's life. Major depressive disorder may be categorized as "single episode" or "recurrent" depending on whether previous episodes have been experienced before.

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Clinicians recognise several subtypes of major depression.

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• Psychotic depression is accompanied by hallucinations or delusions.
• Melancholic depression (what used to be referred to as endogenous depression) is characterized by insomnia, poor appetite and weight loss, less responsive mood, and morning worsening.
• Atypical depression is characterized by "reversed vegetative symptoms" which include oversleeping, overeating, leaden paralysis, rejection sensitivity and temporary brightening of mood in response to positive events. It may overlap with anxiety and panic attacks. It is often more chronic than melancholic depression.
• Dysthymia is a long-term, mild depression that lasts for at least two years. By definition the symptoms are not as severe as in major depression, although those with dysthymia are highly likely to have superimposed major depressive episodes (known as "double depression"). It often begins in adolescence and spans several decades.

Major depression may also be referred to as unipolar affective disorder, a term which emphasizes its relatedness to bipolar disorder.

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Unipolar vs bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a cyclical illness in which moods fluctuate between mania (extreme happiness or giddiness and frantic activity) and clinical depression. Bipolar disorder has also been commonly called "manic depression", although this usage is now unpopular with psychiatrists, who have standardised on Kraepelin's usage of the term "manic depression" to describe the whole bipolar spectrum that includes both bipolar disorder and unipolar depression; they now usually use the term bipolar disorder. This then leaves the term unipolar depression which is used to differentiate it from bipolar disorder.

Related Topics:
Bipolar disorder - Mania

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