DEFINITION:
The term “depression” refers to a painful and pervasive mood or “mental state” whose affective quality may be characterized as sustained sadness, often coupled with generalized or unfocused feelings of loss, grief, failure, hopelessness, pointlessness, or despair.
In its more severe forms, depression may also have serious somatic effects, such as extended bouts of weeping, disturbances in long-established patterns of sleep, appetite, or sexual function, and general lethargy or lack of enthusiasm for one’s normal daily activities and relationships.
Depression may be said to be “pervasive” or “sustained” in the sense that a brief and transitory negative mood would not ordinarily qualify as an instance of the disorder.
ETYMOLOGY:
The term “depression,” in its psychological sense, is attested from the seventeenth century. It gradually replaced the term “melancholia,” dating from Antiquity.
The psychological meaning of “depression” is derived metaphorically from the original astronomical meaning, which indicated the angular distance of a celestial object below the horizon. In this sense, “depression” is attested from the fourteenth century.
The English noun “depression” derives from the verb “to depress,” which derives, via the Middle English verb depressen and the Middle French verb depresser, from the Latin past participle depressus of the verb dēprimo, dēprimere, meaning “to press or sink down.”
DISCUSSION:
The psychological foundation of depression appears to be the inability to imagine a viable future—the sense of there being “no way out.” In its most severe form, so-called “major” depression is one of the principal causes of suicide.
Like most mental illnesses, depression has both biological and developmental causes. Among the developmental causes of depression, the experience of adversity during childhood is often cited as being of prime importance.
Such adversity may include events like losing a parent or other close relative, parental neglect, and mental or physical abuse. The correlation between such adverse events in childhood and the probability of suffering depression as an adult has been empirically demonstrated: the more such events, the higher the probability.
However, not all depression in adults and adolescents may be ascribed to adversity in childhood. Adult experiences may also be very significant. For example, some careers are associated with higher rates of depression than others.
Other life events especially associated with depression include marriage, childbirth, divorce, financial trouble, unemployment, being victim of a crime, addiction, and serious physical illness.
Depression may also occur in children, although childhood depression may manifest in different ways from depression in adults and adolescents, notably, in the form of irritability, defiance, and lack of self-control.
From a personality-psychological perspective, depression is associated with the introverted and neurotic personality types.
Perhaps due to its partially biological etiology, depression tends to run in families.