psychopathology: depression Flashcards
What is depression?
A mental disorder characterised by prolonged and consistent low mood and low energy levels
What is major depressive disorder?
Severe but often short term depression
What are the behavioural characteristics of depression?
- Reduction in activity levels
- Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour
- Aggression and self-harm
What is reduction in activity levels?
- Includes lethargy: lacking the energy needed to perform everyday activities
- Anhedonia is the lack of pleasure usually felt doing enjoyable activities, leading to a reduction in social behaviour
What is disruption to sleep and eating behaviour?
- Either significant weight gain or weight loss
- reduced sleep (insomnia) or an increased need for sleep (hypersomnia)
What is aggression and self-harm?
- Increase in verbal or physical aggression either towards others or themselves in the form of self-harm
- can result in recurrent thoughts of death, suicide attempts or a specific plan of committing suicide
What are the emotional characteristics of depression?
- Lowered mood
- Anger
- Lowered self-esteem
What is lowered mood?
- Depressed mood most of the day, nearly everyday
- daily experience of feeling lethargic or deep sadness
What is lowered self-esteem?
Feelings of worthlessness/ excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly everyday
- can be described as a sense of self-loathing
What are the cognitive characteristics of depression?
- Poor concentration
- Negative schemas
What is poor concentration?
Cannot give their full attention to tasks and when they need to make a decision, they can be indecisive which are likely to affect their work
What are negative schemas?
Automatic negative biases when thinking about themselves, the world and the future
- pay attention to the more negative aspects of a situation and ignore the positives
