# dysthymia
## English
### Etymology

From dys- +‎ -thymia.
From Ancient Greek δυσθυμία (dusthumía, “despondency, despair; ill-temper”), from δυσ- (dus-, “bad”) + θυμός (thumós, “soul, spirit”).

### Noun

dysthymia (usually uncountable, plural dysthymias)
* A tendency to be depressed, without hope.
    Coordinate term: dysphoria
** 2021, Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain, Ch.1, at p.25:
    Other [subway] passengers showed no outward signs of distress. They appeared to have homes and money and good health, they carried briefcases or bags. [...] Their faces didn't cave in despair or trouble or strain. But they still had a walled-off look, their brows furrowed, their eyes cast deep into their newspapers or their laps. They looked so dissatified and burdened and checked-out. As if the weight of the world bore down on them, and something vital was missing. The clinical term for this is "dysthymia"―the low-grade feeling that life is unfulfilling. It feels like emptiness. Hunger. Disillusionment. Life is not what you'd hoped. It's a less severe version of what I saw every day on the inpatient ward: alienation, isolation, futility, darkness. And it's what I recognised in my husband and many of our friends. We were young, in our twenties, full of energy and professional drive, committed to living and working in a way that contributed to the world. But sometimes the rush and buzz of our day-to-day felt more like treadmill than calling.
* (psychiatry) A form of clinical depression, characterized by low-grade depression which lasts at least two years.
    Coordinate term: major depressive disorder
** 1989, James F. Masterson, Ralph Klein, editors, Psychotherapy of the Disorders of the Self: The Masterson Approach, page 369:For diagnostic, research, and treatment reasons, a distinction should always be made between the milder dysthymias, atypical and hysteroid depressions, and the more serious major depressive illnesses, with and without melancholic (vegetative) and psychotic features.
** 1994, John C. Markowitz, James H. Kocsis, “Chapter 9: Dysthymia”, in Leon Grunhaus, John F. Greden, editors, Severe Depressive Disorders, page 209:A decade ago most psychiatrists would have been puzzled to find a chapter on dysthymia in a book about severe depressive disorders. They would have characterized this chronic form of depression as mild, "minor," or "syndromal." […] In recent years, research has demonstrated the severity, prevalence, and importance of vogorous antidepressant treatment of dysthymia, justifying its inclusion here among serious mood disorders.
** 2007, Brian B. Doyle, Understanding and Treating Adults With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder‎, page 231:In other patients, the dysthymia may co-occur with but not be causally related to the ADHD (Adler and Cohen 2004). […] Early studies of adults with ADHD found rates of dysthymia as high as 67%–81% (Wender et al. 1985).
** 2007, Jon G. Allen, Coping With Depression: From Catch-22 to Hope‎, page 12:Dysthymia in childhood or adulthood also significantly increases the risk of developing a subsequent major depressive episode.
** 2011, Gary Landsberg, Wayne Hunthausen, Lowell Ackerman, Behavior Problems of the Dog and Cat, page 363:Involutive depression or bipolar dysthymias must be ruled out. […] Two characteristics of bipolar dysthymias are distinguishable: first, the bipolar disorders are cyclical in character and develop over several days to several weeks, which is quite different from the sudden and sometimes multiple changes of chronic depression; second, the productive phases of dysthymias are accompanied by a considerable decrease in the duration of sleep, to less than 6 hours per day.

#### Synonyms

* (tendency to be depressed): depression, despondence, dejectedness, gloom, lypemania
* (form of clinical depression): depression

#### Antonyms

* (antonym(s) of “tendency to be depressed”): euphoria
* (antonym(s) of “form of clinical depression”): euthymia

#### Related terms

* dysthymiac
* dysthymic
* euthymia

#### Further reading

* “dysthymia”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.