Depression

Question 1

What is depression?

Answer 1

A mental disorder characterised by low mood and low energy levels

Question 2

What are the four types of depression?

Answer 2

1) Major depressive disorder
2) Persistent depressive disorder
3) Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
4) Premenstrual dysphoric disorder

Question 3

What is major depressive disorder?

Answer 3

Severe but often short-term depression

Question 4

What is persistent depressive disorder?

Answer 4

Long-term or recurring depression, including sustained major depression and dysthymia

Question 5

What is disruptive mood dysregulation disorder?

Answer 5

Childhood temper tantrums

Question 6

What is premenstrual dysphoric disorder?

Answer 6

Disruption to mood prior to or during menstruation

Question 7

What are the three behavioural characteristics of depression?

Answer 7

1) Low activity levels
2) Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour
3) Aggression and self-harm

Question 8

Why are low activity levels a problem?

Answer 8

It makes people lethargic and causes them to withdraw from work, education, and social life

Question 9

What is the opposite effect on energy levels that depression can sometimes cause?

Answer 9

Psychomotor agitation

Question 10

What is psychomotor agitation?

Answer 10

When people struggle to relax and have too much energy - may pace up and down a room

Question 11

How does depression disrupt sleeping behaviour?

Answer 11

It can cause reduced sleep (insomnia), particularly premature waking, or an increased need for sleep (hypersomnia)

Question 12

How does depression disrupt eating behaviour?

Answer 12

It can cause increased or decreased appetite, leading to weight gain or weight loss

Question 13

How does depression cause aggression?

Answer 13

It causes irritability which can make a person physically or verbally aggressive

Question 14

Why is aggression bad?

Answer 14

It can have serious knock-on effects on many aspects of like, such as jobs and relationships

Question 15

What is self-harm?

Answer 15

Aggression directed towards the self, such as cutting and suicide attempts

Question 16

What are the three emotional characteristics of depression?

Answer 16

1) Lowered mood
2) Anger
3) Lowered self-esteem

Question 17

What is lowered mood?

Answer 17

Feeling lethargic, sad, worthless, and empty

Question 18

Why does depression cause anger?

Answer 18

It causes a person to experience more negative emotions than positive, especially anger, which can be directed at the self or others

Question 19

What is self-esteem?

Answer 19

The emotional experience of how much we like ourselves

Question 20

Why does depression cause lowered self-esteem?

Answer 20

It causes changes in how people feel about and view themselves - usually people view themselves as less than usual

Question 21

What can lowered self-esteem lead to?

Answer 21

Self-loathing (hating yourself)

Question 22

Why does depression cause cognitive symptoms?

Answer 22

It causes people to process information differently to how normal people would

Question 23

What are the three cognitive characteristics of depression?

Answer 23

1) Poor concentration
2) Attending to and dwelling on the negative
3) Absolutist thinking

Question 24

How does depression cause poor concentration?

Answer 24

It makes it hard to stick with a task that would normally be easy and makes it hard to make decisions that would normally be straightforward

Question 25

Why does depression increase attention to and dwelling on the negative?

Answer 25

It makes people pay more attention to negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives, and may cause bias towards recalling unhappy events rather than happy ones

Question 26

What is absolutist thinking?

Answer 26

Black and white thinking - when a person sees everything as either all-bad or all-good, with no in-betweens

Question 27

Why does depression cause absolutist thinking?

Answer 27

People can’t feel too many emotions and so any slightly bad situation is ultimately an ‘absolute disaster’