Thus, feeling very sad has become depressive disorder.

The definition of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) became purely symptom based.

Over 90 had depressive conditions, and 63 had significant physical illness.

Traditional psychiatry thus adopted a contextual approach to diagnosing a depressive disorder.

M. Guttmacher, in 1941, suggested manic depressive psychosis as a more likely diagnosis.

NEW DELHI Indian cricket fans are manic depressive in their treatment of their favorite teams.

Depressive mental disorders also have been known for as long as written records have been kept.

Depressive disorders caused by neurosis are, on average, two to three times more frequent in women.

Like Hippocrates, physicians throughout history have recognized that the symptoms of normal sadness and depressive disorder were similar.

The distinction between contextually appropriate sadness and depressive disorders remained largely unchanged for two and a half millennia.

He claims that there is a direct link between his depressive state and his fear of being sent back to Bangladesh.

It would not be hard for psychiatry to develop a more adequate definition of depressive disorder that de medicalizes natural emotions of sadness.

But the repercussions for international politics of the disabling conditions diagnosed as manic depressive illnesses (including major unipolar depression) and schizophrenia could not be more serious.

The symptoms that Hippocrates associated with melancholic disorder aversion to food, despondency, sleeplessness, irritability, restlessness are remarkably similar to those contained in modern definitions of depressive disorder.

The DSM III s confusion of normal intense sadness and depressive mental disorder, which persists to the present, emerged inadvertently from psychiatry s response to challenges to the profession during the 1970 s.

But in the post crisis downswing, accumulated debts have a powerful depressive effect, because over leveraged businesses and consumers cut investment and consumption in an attempt to pay down their debts.

At the same time, a special variety of mental illness was first observed, which we would later call schizophrenia and depressive disorders different from a multitude of mental illnesses already known.

A review of mood disorder surveys in different countries found lifetime rates of 6.7 for major depressive disorder (higher in some studies, and in women) and 0.8 for Bipolar I disorder.

In a ten year study among 50,739 US women (mean age, 63 years) free of depressive symptoms at baseline (in 1996), coffee consumption was negatively correlated with risk of developing clinical depression.

The make up of Cluster C would have to be rethought, as the figure shown below could no longer represent all of the disorders if depressive personality disorder were to be included.

Depressive disorders differed from normal reactions because they either arose in the absence of situations that would normally produce sadness or were of disproportionate magnitude or duration relative to whatever cause provoked them.

The clinical implications of the failure to recognize bipolar disorder in depressed patients include the under prescription of mood stabilizing medications, and an increased risk of rapid cycling swings between manic and depressive phases.

All conditions that display five or more of nine symptoms including low mood, lack of pleasure, sleep and appetite difficulties, inability to concentrate, and fatigue over a two week period are now considered depressive disorders.

Both manic depressive illness and schizophrenia are psychotic conditions, characterized by the patient s loss of control over his or her actions and thoughts, a recurrent state in which s he cannot be considered an agent with free will.

On the other hand, rather than atrophying, the amygdala, the seat of emotional memories, becomes hyperactive both in post traumatic stress disorder and depressive illness, and there is evidence from animal studies of a hypertrophy of nerve cells after repeated stress.

This is surprising in an era when treatments that work should supposedly be used with some uniformity. In fact, despite a consensus that ECT is the most effective treatment for severe depressive disorder, it comes at the bottom of the list in most treatment regimens for mood disorders.