Mood Disorders
Depressive disorders or mood disorders affect millions of individuals. Everyone experiences the “blues” on occasion. However, depression can be a powerful and debilitating illness. Children, adolescents, and adults can all experience depressive symptoms.
Common symptoms of depression are lethargy, sadness, irritability, low motivation, a lack of interest in activities which commonly interest the individual, negative self thoughts, low self esteem, low self confidence, a desire to sleep more than usual or an inability to sleep, physical symptoms such as stomachaches and vague aches and pains, and tearfulness.
As noted, symptoms can be experienced by children, adolescents, and adults. Children rarely can verbalize their depressive feelings and tend to demonstrate their symptoms with irritability, lethargy, low self confidence, a lack of interest in activities, and physical symptoms.
Adolescents, due to hormonal and rapid changes in their development, will often demonstrate erratic behaviors. Their moods can change quickly. Extended withdrawal from friends and activities should be addressed. More serious symptoms such as talking about suicide or cutting of themselves should be dealt with immediately.
Another type of serious depressive disorder is bipolar disorder. With bipolar disorder, an individual cycles through different mood states ranging from mania to hypomania to depression. Mania is a state of extremely high energy, limited sleep, grandiose thoughts (“I am the greatest. I can do anything. Everyone else is inferior.”), rapid and excessive speech, and impulsive and potentially self destructive behaviors (gambling one’s life savings, engaging in unsafe sex, cheating in business or personal relationships). Hypomania is a less intense version of mania and actually, if it is managed by the individual, can be very productive in that the individual has energy and can be very focused. Like depression, bipolar disorder can be very debilitating.
A less severe, but nonetheless painful, depressive disorder is dysthymia. Symptoms are similar to depression (although less severe) and tend to last over long periods of time.
The assessment of depression consists of gathering a detailed description of the symptoms, a history of the symptoms, and the completion of symptom checklists.
Treatment involves three types of treatment which have proven to be effective. Those treatments are Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and medication. A combination of these three treatments appears to be the most effective for most individuals.
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