Well, I seem to have a rare excess of free time, and probably will for the next month or so. As long as this is the case, I intend to continue some general posts relevant to depression and treatments for depression. This latest general post is on Depression itself. Depression refers to a disorder of mood such that a person is so persistently and severely depressed that they are miserable or less able to function. When these emotions spin out of control to the extent they adversely affect us, we describe this as depression.
Depression includes a variety of physical and psychological symptoms.
Normally people experience a wide range of moods and feel more or less in control of their mood. Depressive disorders are clinical conditions which involve mood that is persistently sad or depressed, AND this depressed mood causes significant distress or impairment in functioning. I will refer to definitions from this source. These involve mood which becomes elevated as well as depressed. I will not discuss these here, but they can involve periodic depression as well.