Depression is a drop in mood that can present itself in different ways. According to experts in Psychiatry, there are different types of depression and different ways to treat it.
What is depression?
Depression is a decline in mood, which does not always manifest itself through sadness, but is also reflected in a lack of energy, loss of desire to entertain and communicate, easy crying, somatic complaints, etc. Sometimes depression is accompanied by anxiety, easy irritability, desires of death and/or suicide, ideas that unknown people criticize them, increased or decreased appetite and sleep disorders (the person gets sleepy but wakes up earlier).
For these symptoms to constitute a depressive condition, they must appear continuously for at least 15 days.
Causes of depression
As in almost all mental disorders, depression appears due to biological factors that can be genetic, alterations of the cerebral limbic system due to illness or trauma, and the effect of medications or consumption of toxic substances; psychological factors: there are ways of being that have more facility to become depressed, for example, obsessive personality; and social factors, whether family, interpersonal work, etc.
Depending on the type of depression that we will now discuss, one cause or another predominates.
Types of depression
Major depressive episode. This is the most common and contains many of the symptoms described above. Its cause is biopsychosocial, except in:
- Major depression with melancholia (formerly called endogenous depression). It is predominantly biological and has characteristic symptoms, such as somatic localization of sadness “I have a pain in my stomach”, not getting slightly better when something good happens, ideas of guilt, ruin and hypochondria that can become delusions, morning worsening, etc.
- Depressive pictures within the Bipolar Disorder (that is to say, alternating with phases of euphoria).
In these 2 cases the etiology is biological (endogenous) of unclear cause (it is known that monoamines decrease: serotonin, noradrenaline and/or dopamine).
- Depression produced by medical illnesses, for example, hypothyroidism and brain tumors.
- Depression caused by the effect of drugs, e.g. anti-tumor and anti-HIV drugs.
- Depression caused by substance abuse (or withdrawal). For example, alcohol, amphetamine products, cocaine, etc.
In these cases the cause is the effect on the limbic system of the disease or substances.
- Dysthymia: these are pictures with milder and less lasting symptoms than those described, alternating with periods of normality but extending for at least 2 years. They are usually related to personality traits or disorders.
Within these types there are levels of severity, possibility of recurrences, chronicity, etc.