Mood disorders description

Clinical Features of Mood Disorders Description of Mood Disorders... 

Mood disorders produce impairments in many domains relevant to a debate on the biology of both the subjective and objective components of consciousness. Thus a description of the neurochemistry believed to be important... 

Clinical descriptions and criteria for diagnosis of disorders of mood will only be mentioned in passing. The reader should consult standard reference sources for this material. Here we will discuss how discoveries of various antidepressants have impacted the diagnostic criteria for depression and how they may have modified the natural history and course of this illness. The goal of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with current ideas about the clinical and biological aspects of mood disorders in order to be prepared to understand how the various antidepressants and mood stabilizers work. 

I told Jennifer that from her descriptions, both of her parents probably were depressed, even though neither had ever been formally diagnosed. Genetics probably accounts for 40 to 50 percent of mood disorders, including depression but because mental illness has been stigmatized for so long, many people who today would be considered depressed have never been diagnosed. 

For further progress towards mechanisms based models, such phenomenological descriptions shall also be examined in context with disease-related disturbances of autonomous functions. This mainly concerns disturbances of sleep-wake cycles and cortisol release which are the most reliable biological markers of mental diseases, especially major depression, and can provide objective and quantifiable parameters (e.g. EEG frequency components, cortisol blood level) for the estimation of an otherwise mainly subjective and only behaviorally manifested illness. Moreover, there is a manifold of data which interlink the alterations of the autonomous system parameters (sleep states, cortisol release) with alterations of neural dynamics. Therefore, the most promising approach also to understand the interrelations between neural dynamics and affective disorders probably goes via the analysis of mood related disturbances of autonomous functions. 

This is perhaps the earliest documented clinical description of bipolar disorder. Keen observers noticed not only that certain individuals suffered from depression but also that, seemingly inexplicably, their mood would suddenly switch into the polar opposite from dejection to unbridled excitement, from profound despair to limitless optimism, or from paralyzing fatigue to superhuman levels of activity and energy. Bipolar disorder, as it is presently termed, historically has been called manic-depressive insanity (as it was called in Kraepelin s [1919/1971, 1976] time) or manic-depressive illness. The term bipolar was coined several decades ago in an effort to reflect the hallmark of the disorder two opposite poles of the affective continuum. 

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