Is Psychiatric Disorder Deadly?
18th October 2009 by Depressed No CommentsWhen people think of clinical depression, they think of it as an actual psychiatric disorder rather than merely being “down in the dumps” for a while. The illness’s official designation is major depressive disorder, named so clinicians can distinguish it from depression that’s symptomatic of other mental illnesses. But the former term has the widest use among the general populace. The symptoms of clinical, depressive disorder major tend to take over people’s lives, sometimes involving physical manifestations like lethargy, weight gain, or loss of sex drive along with emotional symptoms like sadness, negativity, lack of self-esteem and concentration problems. In extreme cases, thoughts of suicide or self-harm are common.
Things we tend to think of separately, like post partum depression or seasonal affective disorder (SAD), are actually sub-categories of major depressive disorder. One of the distinguishing features of all the categories is that the pervasive low mood lasts for at least two weeks or even longer, and the patient experiences at least five of the typical clinical depression symptoms. That’s the point where it’s clear that this is more than simply being “a bit down,” and therapy and treatment become necessary.
Treatments usually recommended for major depressive disorder are medication, psychotherapy, or even electroconvulsive therapy in severe cases. However, many new treatments have been put forward in recent years, some of which haven’t yet gained complete legitimacy in the eyes of the public or in the estimation of physicians. One that has done so, though, is light therapy, now used to treat SAD. But other natural treatments, like the herb St. John’s Wort or the Chinese practice of acupuncture, have both proponents and critics undecided.
The main thing is that the person with clinical depression needs help, whether it involves alternative, psychiatric or medical treatments. The best scenario is if they can find a depression treatment center and a therapist who will examine all the possible causes and triggers. For example, there may be physical causes like family genetics, or even a treatment for a disease that would alleviate the symptoms of depression. Or the person’s depressive episode may have been triggered by recent bereavement, alcoholism or prior sexual abuse. If the person’s therapist can act as a sleuth in this way, the patient has a much better chance of recovering from or managing this major depressive disorder.
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