Depression Flashcards
What is depression?
A mental disorder characterised by low mood and low energy levels
What are the four types of depression?
1) Major depressive disorder
2) Persistent depressive disorder
3) Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
4) Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
What is major depressive disorder?
Severe but often short-term depression
What is persistent depressive disorder?
Long-term or recurring depression, including sustained major depression and dysthymia
What is disruptive mood dysregulation disorder?
Childhood temper tantrums
What is premenstrual dysphoric disorder?
Disruption to mood prior to or during menstruation
What are the three behavioural characteristics of depression?
1) Low activity levels
2) Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour
3) Aggression and self-harm
Why are low activity levels a problem?
It makes people lethargic and causes them to withdraw from work, education, and social life
What is the opposite effect on energy levels that depression can sometimes cause?
Psychomotor agitation
What is psychomotor agitation?
When people struggle to relax and have too much energy - may pace up and down a room
How does depression disrupt sleeping behaviour?
It can cause reduced sleep (insomnia), particularly premature waking, or an increased need for sleep (hypersomnia)
How does depression disrupt eating behaviour?
It can cause increased or decreased appetite, leading to weight gain or weight loss
How does depression cause aggression?
It causes irritability which can make a person physically or verbally aggressive
Why is aggression bad?
It can have serious knock-on effects on many aspects of like, such as jobs and relationships
What is self-harm?
Aggression directed towards the self, such as cutting and suicide attempts
What are the three emotional characteristics of depression?
1) Lowered mood
2) Anger
3) Lowered self-esteem
What is lowered mood?
Feeling lethargic, sad, worthless, and empty
Why does depression cause anger?
It causes a person to experience more negative emotions than positive, especially anger, which can be directed at the self or others
What is self-esteem?
The emotional experience of how much we like ourselves
Why does depression cause lowered self-esteem?
It causes changes in how people feel about and view themselves - usually people view themselves as less than usual
What can lowered self-esteem lead to?
Self-loathing (hating yourself)
Why does depression cause cognitive symptoms?
It causes people to process information differently to how normal people would
What are the three cognitive characteristics of depression?
1) Poor concentration
2) Attending to and dwelling on the negative
3) Absolutist thinking
How does depression cause poor concentration?
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
Why does depression increase attention to and dwelling on the negative?
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
What is absolutist thinking?
Black and white thinking - when a person sees everything as either all-bad or all-good, with no in-betweens
Why does depression cause absolutist thinking?
People can’t feel too many emotions and so any slightly bad situation is ultimately an ‘absolute disaster’
