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What is Clinical Depression?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
commonly 'shortened' to the acronym DSM is a comprehensive
classification of officially recognized psychiatric
disorders, that is published by the American Psychiatric
Association. The DSM is designed for use by mental health
professionals to ensure that diagnoses are consistent and
uniform throughout the profession. This is important for
patients and sufferers of depression as it ensures that their
condition will be most efficiently assessed. This in turn
will help in determining the best type of treatment.
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According to the criteria laid out in DSM-IV (the latest
version of this respected tome, published in 1991) the
term 'Clinical Depression' is usually used to denote
a type of depression that is not merely a typical, or
normal, temporary mood change evoked by events in a persons
life such as a bereavement leading to a period of grieving.
Even so, this does not make it a simple matter to determine
if someone can be classed as suffering from Clinical
Depression.
Someone suffering from a true depressive disorder has an
illness that involves the mind, mood, and the body. It can
affect the sufferer's pattern of eating and sleeping. When
someone is clinically depressed it affects the way they
see, and feel about themselves as well as they way they
think about things, and life in general.
Being truly depressed is not the same as simply feeling
'blue' or down for a while. Although fraught with stigma
it is not a sign of being 'weak' and it also not or a
condition that can simply be willed or wished away. In
other words the last thing that anyone with a depressive
illness can be expected to do is merely "pull themselves
together", the typical retort of those who do not have
any insight to clinical depression.
Clinical depression requires treatment, just as any type
of physical illness does. Without treatment, symptoms can
potentially last for weeks, months, or even years. If a
person suffering form clinical depression is accurately
and efficiently diagnosed and the appropriate form of
treatment for them is identified, then the majority will
be able to make a full recovery. However, it is often the
case that those who have experienced a bout of depressive
illness may have one or more subsequent period when they
will become clinically depressed again and require an
additional period of treatment.
See our pages about What to do about Depression.
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