Depression: What are the Clinical Characteristics?

The diagnosis of depression (or major depressive disorder) requires the presence of five of the following symptoms (including either depressed mood or loss of interest and pleasure). The symptoms must also cause clinically significant distress or impairment in general functioning and not be better accounted for by bereavement. For a diagnosis of depression, these symptoms should be present all or most of the time, and should persist for longer than 2 weeks.

• Sad, depressed mood: This is indicated by either subjective reporting (such as feeling sad or feeling empty) or observations made by others (for example, if the person is often crying).

• Loss of interest and pleasure in usual activities: This is indicated by either subjective accounts, or observations made by other people.

• Difficulty in sleeping: This is referred to commonly as insomnia , and it is common in depressed people that they have a desire to sleep all of the time. This is referred to as hypersomnia.

• Shift in activity level, becoming either lethargic or agitated: This is observable by other people, and is not merely subjective feelings of restlessness.

• Poor appetite and weight loss, or increased appetite and weight gain: Significant weight loss can occur when not dieting, and also a significant decrease (or increase) of appetite.

• Loss of energy and great fatigue

• Negative self-concept, feelings of worthlessness and guilt: This is indicated by an excessive or inappropriate guilt, which may or may not be delusional.

• Difficulty in concentrating: This includes things such as slowed down thinking, or perhaps indecisiveness.

• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide: There is research to suggest that major depressive disorders account for about 20-35% of all deaths by suicide. This research was conducted by Angst et al. in 1995.

I hope this has been of interest, and thank you for taking your time to read :)