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MAJOR DEPRESSION

Major depression involves low mood and/or loss of interest and pleasure in usual activities. Symptoms are experienced most days and last for at least two weeks. The symptoms interfere with all areas of a person's life, including work and social relationships.

 

POSTNATAL DEPRESSION
Postnatal depression is when women experience mood swings after the birth of their baby. However, postnatal depression (PND) describes the more severe or prolonged symptoms of depression (clinical depression) that last more than a week or two and interfere with the ability to function on a daily basis with normal routines including caring for a baby. 

DYSTHYMIC DISORDER

The symptoms of dysthymia are similar to those of major depression but are less severe. However, in the case of dysthymia, symptoms last longer. A person has to have this milder depression for more than two years to be diagnosed with dysthymia.

 

MELANCHOLIA

This is the term used to describe a severe form of depression where many of the physical symptoms of depression are present. One of the major changes is that the person can be observed to move more slowly. The person is also more likely to have a depressed mood that is characterised by complete loss of pleasure in everything, or almost everything.

 

PSYCHOTIC DEPRESSION

Sometimes people with a depressive condition can lose touch with reality and experience psychosis. This can involve hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there) or delusions (false beliefs that are not shared by others), such as believing they are bad or evil, or that they are being watched or followed. They can also be paranoid, feeling as though everyone is against them or that they are the cause of illness or bad events occurring around them.

 

CYCLOTHYMIC DISORDER

Cyclothymic disorder is often described as a milder form of bipolar disorder. The person experiences chronic fluctuating moods over at least two years, involving periods of hypomania (a mild to moderate level of mania) and periods of depressive symptoms, with very short periods (no more than two months) of normality between. The duration of the symptoms are shorter, less severe and not as regular, and therefore don't fit the criteria of bipolar disorder or major depression.

 

BIPOLAR DISORDER

Bipolar disorder used to be known as 'manic depression' because the person experiences periods of depression and periods of mania, with periods of normal mood in between. A person with bipolar can seem fustrated and irritable most of the time and experience psycotic episodes.