DEPRESSION
Depression is a condition accompanied by an affect of longing (Hypo-thymia), inhibition of thinking and decreased motor activity (depressive triad).
Reactive depression. It manifests itself as a reaction to negative external stimuli. Always clearly associated with a traumatic situation. It can be reduced immediately after the cause is eliminated.
Endogenous (autochthonous) depression occurs due to a violation of neurotransmitter exchange in the brain.
This also includes involutional depression, which occurs in presenile and senile age. According to the degree of severity (depth) of depressive States, neurotic and psychotic depression are distinguished.
Neurotic depression. The leading symptom is an indistinct affect of melancholy with a hint of sadness, depression, light anxiety, pessimism. There is also a decrease in volitional and mental activity.
Criticism of their condition is fully preserved. In the occurrence of a depressive disorder, there is sometimes a connection with a psychotraumatic situation. The most important condition for the formation of depressive syndrome is a personal predisposition. There are noticeable mood swings throughout the day.
Psychotic depression (major depressive disorder) is a classic type of depression that is characteristic of the depressive phase of manic – depressive syndrome.
The affect of melancholy reaches the degree of an extremely painful condition for the patient. A pessimistic assessment of one’s past, present, and future is characteristic, reaching the level of super-valuable ideas of self-blame or depressive delirium.
The content of delusional ideas (delusions of sinfulness, self-accusation, hypochondriac content) seems to follow from emotional pathology.
Very often, patients have suicidal ideas that they seek to implement. Inhibition of thinking can reach the degree of monoideism (as a rule, this is the thought of suicide).
Motor disorders are manifested in the form of subjectively perceived difficulties in performing motor acts, heaviness throughout the body. Patients rarely and with difficulty move, characterized by a shuffling slow gait with small steps. The expression of the face is mournful (the veragut fold is a skin furrow on the forehead between the eyebrows), melancholy, frozen.
Motor inhibition can reach a state of depressive stupor. In psychotic depression, SOMATO-vegetative disorders are noted in the form of an increase in the tone of the sympathetic part of the Central nervous system: tachycardia, mydriasis, constipation (Protopopov’s triad). Dryness of the mucous membranes is characteristic (crying without tears).
Appetite is greatly reduced, up to anorexia, and sometimes the dynamics of depression are judged by fluctuations in body weight.
Sleep disorders are observed in the form of a violation of falling asleep, lack of a sense of rest after sleep, and increased drowsiness during the day may be noted. The duration of a depressive disorder is calculated in months.