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DepressionAbout 21 million adults in America will experience and suffer from a depression this year. Depression, both a mental and physical illness, is of a serious concern on many levels because of the emotional and economical impact on families and society. The financial cost is great but the cost in human pain and suffering cannot even be anticipated or estimated. While depressive disorders are treatable, many individuals who suffer from this disorder do not seek help. Many do not realize or believe that, for most people who suffer with its symptoms,it is a treatable condition. According to NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) due to years of fruitful research there are medications and psychosocial therapeutic approaches, such as a cognitive/behavioral approach that can ease the pain of depression. There are many different types of depression and variations of the diagnostic criteria identifying those types. There is variability from one person to another in the number of symptoms, the severity, duration, and debilitating outcomes of those symptoms. The number of symptoms and the severity of those symptoms experienced by an individual can change over time going from less to greater or from greater to less. The episodes of depression experienced by a person can number from one single episode in a lifetime to many episodes in a lifetime. The most common types of depression or depressive disorders are major depression, dysthymia, and bipolar depression. A Severe Level DisorderClinical Depression, also known as Major Depressive Disorder, is a medical classification of depression describing individuals who persistently experience the symptoms of depression listed below.Clinical Depression is a severe level disorder, but can be treated successfully in 80% of the individuals who seek treatment. The person plagued with Major Depressive Disorder has no ability to cheer him or herself up. They often have thoughts of death or suicide. • Depressed mood • Diminished interest or pleasure in activities • Significant changes in appetite - weight loss or weight gain • Insomnia or hypersominia • Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt • Diminished ability to concentrate or think • Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide Major Depressive Disorder is thought to have genetic implications, that is, the predisposition or vulnerability for clinical depression might be inherited. This form of depression is often associated with changes in brain structures and brain functioning. Although, major depression can also be triggered by numerous disappointments, unresolved problems in a person’s life or it can occur due to one or more events considered to be traumatic and/or life threatening. Cognitive therapy plays an important role in assimilating and assessing disappointment and developing problem solving skills. Major Depressive Disorder is not a discriminatory illness. It can and does affect men and women of all ages, races, socioeconomic and social status. The serious nature of severe Major Depressive Disorder is manifested in the fact that two-thirds of depressed patients ponder taking their own lives. History of DepressionDepression has been recorded since antiquity. Mood disorders have been found in many ancient documents. The story of King Saul, in the Old Testament, describes a depressive syndrome. The story of Ajax’s suicide in Homer’s Iliad is another account of depression.About 400 B.C. the terms “mania” and “melancholia” was used by Hippocrates to describe mental disturbances. Around A.D. 30, Aulus Cornelius Celsus described melancholia in De re medicina as a depression caused by black bile. The term melancholia was also used by Arataeus (A.D. 120-180), Galen (A.D. 129-199), and Alexander of Tralles in the sixth century. Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish physician, thought of melancholia as a discrete disease entity. Bonet, in 1686, described a mental illness called maniaco-melancholicus. Jules Falret, in 1854 described alternating moods of mania and depression and called the condition folie circulaire. Another French psychiatrist, Jules Baillarger, described the condition as folie a double forme. In 1882 a German psychiatrist named Karl Kahlbaum used the term cyclothymia to describe mania and depression as aspects of the same illness. In 1899, Emil Kraepelin built upon the knowledge of previous German and French psychiatrists to describe the condition he called manic-depressive psychosis. His criteria for diagnosing a patient with manic-depressive psychosis contains most of the diagnostic categories used by psychiatrists today. Kraepelin also described two other cases of depression: one beginning after menopause in women and one beginning in late adulthood for men both of which he called involutional melancholia.
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