Depression is a disease with a specific set of symptoms, notably a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Depression sufferers lose vitality, self-esteem and experience mood disorders. Depression is the cause of unreasonable and unnecessary suffering for millions of people, often to the point of disabling the sufferer. Depressed individuals usually struggle with completing their day-to-day tasks, feeling as if there’s no more point in living.
Depressive disorders can be found throughout the world. Depressive patients account for a significant proportion of all those requiring mental heath care and, as the majority of them remain untreated, their suffering continues to disable them and to cause losses to their families and communities. The situation is especially severe in developing countries. Lack of adequate detection and treatment is due to poorly-trained health workers, scarce resources, and insufficient knowledge.
By 2020 depression will be the second most debilitating disease, yet in many parts of the world depression is stigmatized, with many people refusing treatment for fear of social backlash. Even so, tremendous strides are being made in the study and treatment of depression, including a better understanding of its causes and how best to treat it.
In psychiatry, a major depressive episode refers to a clinical syndrome consisting of lowering of mood-tone (feelings of painful dejection), and loss of interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities, most of the time for a period of at least two weeks. It is experienced as a paralyzing listlessness, dejection and self-deprecation, as well as an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. It is a pathological state of conscious psychic suffering and guilt, accompanied by a marked reduction in the sense of personal values, and a diminution of mental, psychomotor, and even organic activity, unrelated to actual deficiency. As used by the layman, the word depression refers to the mood element, which in psychiatry would more appropriately be labelled dejection, sadness, gloominess, despair or despondency. Dysthymia is the state just below the threshold for major depression.