Depression, in the field of Psychology, is a mental disease in where a patient undergoes a deep, seemingly inescapable gloom and lack of pleasure in almost activities as well as those things he or she usually enjoy doing. A lot of us wold also use the word depression to point a transient sadness, blues or loneliness that everyone alive experiences from time to time. This is actually normal sadness, but severe depression is different. This can also be called a major depression.

What major depression can do is that it can almost totally impair an individual’s ability to function in social situations and at his job. Patients with major depression often have feelings of worthlessness, despair, thoughts of committing suicide and most commonly a sense of hopelessness.

Depression can take several other manifestations. In a bipolar kind of depression, which is also known as manic-depressive illness, a patient’s mood swings back and forth between depression and mania. People with seasonal affective disorder typically suffer from depression only during autumn and winter, when there are fewer hours of daylight.

There is this another form called dysthymia (pronounced dis-THI-mee-uh). In dysthymia, patients feel very sad, have low self-esteem, and concentrate poorly most of the time—often for a period of years—but their symptoms are not that worse as compared to major depression. But then, there are some patients with dysthymia that sometines experience episodes of major depression. Mental health professionals or Psychiatrists use the word clinical depression to refer to any of the above forms of depression. It is a general term for any type of depression.

Research has revealed that people commonly view depression as a sign of personal weakness, but psychiatrists and psychologists view it as a real illness. In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health was surprised to found out that depression costs society many billions of dollars year after year. You may ask how, remember that depression can affect the person’s performance or interest in his job, so the monetary loss is mostly due to lost work time.

How is Depression being treated?

Unlike any diseases that we know, Depression, being psychologic in origin, typically cannot be cured at an instant by any drugs or willed away by teh person concerned. An episode must therefore run its course until it weakens either on its own or with treatment. Depression can be treated effectively with antidepressant drugs, psychotherapy, or a combination of both.

Even though there is wide availability of effective treatment, a lot of depressive disorders go undiagnosed and therefore not managed. Research show that general physicians fail to recognize depression in their patients at least half of the time. Moreover, a lot of physicians and patients view depression in old people as a normal part of aging, even though treatment for depression in geriatric people is usually does work well.