Major Depressive Disorder

I talked about Bipolar disorder in my last post. Another common mood disorder is MDD. Many people in today’s world misuse the true meaning of mood disorders. You will find someone with normal mood swings referred to as Bipolar, which is really offensive to people with the actual disorder. Another example would be a girl who feels she did terribly bad on her exam: “Ugh! I did so bad, I am so depressed!” Do you even know what depression is? Well, let me give you brief you through this major disorder.

Major depressive disorder, also known as unipolar disorder, is a mental disorder that is characterized by a full-blown low mood, accompanied with low self-esteem, loss of interest and pleasure in daily life activities. Major depressive is a disorder that largely affects a person’s family, work, school, social life, sleeping and eating habits – health in general. The disorder is common between the ages of 20-30 and is recurrent between the ages of 30-40. There is no specific tests for MDD, it is usually diagnosed based on a patient’s self-reported experiences and behaviors. patients are usually treated with anti-depressants, and could sometimes receive psychotherapy or counseling. Like Bip0lar, with severe cases, MDD patients might be hospitalized if the situation reached self-neglect or harm to self or others.

Patients with MDD have shorter life expectancies than those without the disorder. No one knows for sure what the causal factors for MDD are, but they include psychological, psycho-social, hereditary, evolutionary and biological factors. The disorder is co-morbid with other disorders, which causes greater disability and increases suicide attempts.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive disorder, is a mood disorder in which people experience unusual mood swings, which include the state known as mania (or hypomania) and another state of depression. The first stage a person must go through in order to be diagnosed with Bipolar disorder is the manic stage. A person must go through mania whether it is with or without one or more depressive episodes. This manic stage is what helps with diagnosis.

Hypomania is a lower level of mania, where an individual may be energetic and excited. However, in mania, people are usually very impulsive and make poor decisions due to unrealistic ideas about their future, and could have difficulty sleeping. When people with bipolar disorder are manic, they can show psychotic behavior that includes violence. And when they are experiencing a depressive episode, they are on quite a low and all they can think about is suicide and how dark life is, and it is very hard to be able to imagine a tomorrow. One might experience a “mixed state” which includes both mania and depression at the same time. For some people, these episodes are sometimes separated by period of “normal” mood, and for others these period may rapidly alternate, which is known as “rapid cycling”. Severe cycles could sometimes lead to delusions and hallucinations. Bipolar is common between men, women and across different cultures and ethnicity.

Causal factors of Bipolar disorder could be genetic, but are mainly environmental. The disorder is often treated with mood stabilizing meds and psychotherapy. But in serious cases where a person could be very violent and end up hurting himself or other people, hospitalization could exist. That usually happens when someone experiences suicide ideation in one of their depressive episodes. People with Bipolar could sometimes be misdiagnosed as having Schizophrenia because of the psychotic symptoms.