Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Melancholic Depression: The Severest of All Major Depressions

By Eric L. Kappel


Among the various mild and severe sub-types of major depression, there includes postpartum depression, catatonic depression, atypical depression, seasonal effective disorder (SAD), and melancholic depression. As the science and technology advances, new and most desired pleasure giving, luxurious and life friendly commodities and necessities are invented, manufactured on a larger scale, advertised and publicized, marketed, retailed and are made more and more accessible to the needy. Besides all this a hard reality cannot be ignored, "To achieve something, you have to lose the other". It means to avail all of these extravagancies; you need to invest extraordinary labor, skills and time. If at times you are not in possession of what you direly desired for, it results in a continued frustration leading to a situation in the form of mental illness called depression.

Melancholic depression outcomes inside the loss of any interest in numerous life-spending activities, and in such a condition, you fail to react towards the stimuli of joy and pleasure. In brief, this state of depression may be regarded as the more pronounced and aggravated state of depressed mood than the intensity of an ordinary grief. The other indicators of such a depressive disorder involve worsening from the melancholic symptoms in early morning waking, early morning hours, feelings of excessive guilt, excessive weight-loss and the psychomotor retardation. Anyhow, the depression stimulated weight-loss must not be confused or associated with all the anorexia nervosa. Its symptoms also differ among various age groups, i.e. kids, the young and the old.

Melancholic depression is a kind of a severe mood disorder, a term coined by the American Psychiatric Association in its diagnostic manual's edition of the year 1980, which referred to the syndrome or a cluster of symptoms like all-encompassing low mood and a sense of low self-esteem. Loss of appetite and excessive feelings of guilt are some other symptoms of the psychiatric disorder.

Depression with melancholic characteristics or melancholic depression is really the DSM-IV subtype of MDD (Significant Depressive Disorder), that is also termed as unipolar depression, unipolar disorder, clinical depression or recurrent depressive disorder. This type of depression on the basis of biological study is deemed the intense and severe type of depression. Among the numerous causes of DSM-IV, biological, social and psychological variables play an critical function. Anyhow, it may also be brought on by excessive drug and alcoholic use too as result from the evolutionary perspective.

Melancholic depression is not some thing incurable. Nonetheless, if timely treatment just isn't known as for, it can lead to the loss of life due to suicide or other causes. Its diagnosis is carried out through DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 criteria, clinical assessment and differential diagnosis. In the initial stage of remedy preventive measures are suggested and if prove in vain, the other management mechanism is applied like psychotherapy and antidepressants. Electroconvulsive therapy or the ECT is actually a present day kind of its therapy, usually applied at the last stage. Cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy, that are the empirically supported remedies, also give in some cases an productive solution for the issue.




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