People are dumb; there’s nothing new about that. Public ignorance about depression in particular was on display recently in a news article I came across, and it annoyed me, so I thought I’d write about it. First, let’s start with some background. The news related to the findings of an article published last month in […]
A Display of Public Ignorance About Depression Read More »
Depression can affect mood in a number of ways, including causing irritability. This is sometimes a feature of my own depression, and it can get pretty ugly. In the DSM-5, adults must have at least one of depressed mood or anhedonia to receive a major depressive disorder or bipolar depression diagnosis, but in children, irritable
Irritability in Depression: When Mean Bitch Comes Out to Play Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is atypical depression. “Atypical features” is a specifier that describes individual depressive episodes. While the name suggests it’s not particularly common, that’s not actually the case. The atypical name comes because of the way it differs from depression
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Anhedonia, which refers to decreased ability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable things, is a core symptom of depression; in fact, you can get a diagnosis of major depressive disorder without depressed mood if you have anhedonia. Anhedonia is a part of the melancholic features specifier for depression, as opposed to atypical features, which involves
Depression, Anhedonia, and the Brain Read More »
I need to pull my thoughts together in preparation for my first appointment with my new psychiatrist today, and I thought I might as well do it here. Medication refills The discharge prescription from the hospital was for weekly refills. I want to get more medication than this at a time, and here’s my concern.
Thoughts Before Meeting My New Psychiatrist Read More »
This guest post on dealing with depression in relationships, either as the depressed or the non-depressed person, comes from Marimeia of Through Anxiety and Beyond. We’ve done a guest post tradesies, and you can read my post about how fabulous all of you are on her blog here. I have recently been to visit a
Tips on Dealing with Depression in Relationships: Guest Post Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is melancholic depression, also known as depression with melancholic features. The word melancholia comes from the Greek for black bile, part of the ancient four humours medical belief system. In the 5th century BCE, Hippocrates first identified melancholia as
What is… Melancholic Depression Read More »
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a non-departmental public body of England’s Department of Health, provides evidence-based guidance on the treatment of medical conditions. Every so often, they update their guidelines, and new depression guidelines are expected to be released in May 2022. This post will take a look at the draft
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Depression is never fun, but depression and the holidays is a particularly un-fun combination. Christmas was a very positive thing for most of my life. It was always a low-stress affair, and food was a very big part of it. Plus I always liked Christmas trees. The last time I actually celebrated Christmas would have
Depression and the Holidays: A Blue Christmas Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is seasonal affective disorder. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a subtype of depression or bipolar with symptoms that occur based on a seasonal pattern. It was first described in 1984 as the result of an American study of mostly
What Is… Seasonal Affective Disorder Read More »
