Feeling blue, low, sad, downhearted, discouraged and unhappy?
DEPRESSION is the most widespread psychological disorder. It is the
common cold of mental illness. Almost everyone has felt depression,
at least in its mild forms. Feeling blue, low, sad, downhearted, discouraged,
and unhappy are all common depressive experiences. But familiarity does
not produce understanding; for it is only in the last two decades that major
advances have been made. Today the great majority of individuals suffering
from severe depressions can be helped. We also now know some of its
causes.
NORMAL VERSUS CLINICAL DEPRESSION
Loss and pain are inevitable parts of growing up and growing older. Sometimes
people we care for reject us, we write bad papers, our stocks go down,
we fail to get the job we want, people we love die. When these losses occur
we go into mourning, and then emerge, our lives poorer, but with hope for
the future. Almost everyone reacts to loss with some of the symptoms of depression.
We become sad and discouraged, apathetic and passive, the future
looks bleak, some of the zest goes out of living. Such a reaction is normal and
we have repeatedly found that at any given moment 25 to 30 percent of
college undergraduates will have such symptoms, at least to some extent
(Seligman, unpublished). Nancy's depression is mild and within the normal
range of reaction to loss.
“Within a two-day period, Nancy got a C on her Abnormal Psychology midterm
and found out that the boy she had loved in her home town during high school
had become engaged. The week that followed was awful: her future looked empty since she believed she would now not get into graduate school in clinical psychology and that she would never find anyone she could deeply love again. She blamed herself for these failures in the two most important arenas of her life. For the first few days she had trouble getting out of bed to go to class. She burst into tears over dinner one evening and had to leave the table. Missing dinner didn't much matter any way since she wasn't hungry. After one week, the world started to look better.
The instructor said that because the grades were so low on the midterm, everyone had the option of writing a paper to cancel out their midterm grade, and Nancy found herself looking forward to a blind date that her roommate had arranged for the weekend. Her usual bounce and enthusiasm for life began to return, and with it her appetite. She thought "It will be an uphill battle, but I'm basically O.K. and I think I may find love and success."
How does such "normal" depression relate to the more serious depressive
disorders?
There are two kinds of depressive disorders, unipolar depression
in which the individual suffers only depressive symptoms without ever experiencing
mania, and bipolar depression (or manic-depression) in which
both depression and mania occur. Mania is defined by excessive elation,
expansiveness, irritability, talkativeness, inflated self-esteem, and flight of
ideas. The existence of two mood disorders, which go in apparently opposite
directions, has given rise to the name affective disorders to embrace unipolar
depression, bipolar depression, and mania. Normal depression differs in
degree from unipolar depression; both have the same kinds of symptoms,
but the unipolar depressive has more symptoms, more severely, more frequently,
and for a longer time. The line between a "normal" depressive disturbance
and a clinically significant depressive disorder is blurry.
Bipolar depressions, on the other hand, are clearly distinguishable from
normal and unipolar depressions. They involve swings between episodes of
mania and episodes of depression, and as we shall see, they probably have a
genetic component. Bipolar depression develops at a younger age, and is
often more crippling to the individual. Fortunately, a specific drug, lithium
carbonate, seems to help considerably.
For many years, all depression was viewed as part of manic-depression. In
the last decade, it has become clear that the large majority of depressions are
unipolar and unrelated to manic-depression. Depression usually occurs in
people who have never had mania, and mania may occur in people who
have never been depressed. For this reason, we shall first discuss unipolar
depression. We will then take up bipolar depression (manic-depression). We
conclude by examining the most catastrophic outcome of both unipolar and
bipolar depression: suicide.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Social Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety
Panic Disorder
Major Depression Disorder
Agoraphobia
For The Therapy I recommend click here:
The Liberator Method
Social Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety
Panic Disorder
Major Depression Disorder
Agoraphobia
For The Therapy I recommend click here:
The Liberator Method