Page 13 - Vision Manual

Practical Facts about Mood Disorders
What are Mood Disorders?
Mood disorders are a category of mental health diagnoses that are identified based on symptoms that directly relate to someone’s experiences of sadness, depression, or mania. Mood disorders also involve the way that people think and how they act, and also some of the impulses that they might have. Mood disorders include some of the most common diagnoses such as Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and Dysthymia. It also includes less common disorders that will be briefly discussed later. Understanding mood disorders, how they are diagnosed, and how they are talked about, will help you to understand your own experience and communicate effectively with your care providers.
Questions: What is your experience with some of the diagnoses listed above? If you haven’t experienced them yourself, do you know any that have? What have you seen and learned?
Depression
Depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders. 15 to 20 people out of every 100 have a period of serious depression at some time in their lives. It occurs everywhere throughout the world, to every kind of person, to every gender, and to every income level. Depression causes people to have extremely low moods and oftentimes feel very sad. Individuals with depression will talk about feeling as if there isn’t anything worth doing. For many people, depression starts with a feeling of fatigue or tiredness, and advances to extreme guilt, hopelessness, and other symptoms. For many people, depression seriously interferes with work, social life, free time, and the ability to manage day to day responsibilities.
Depression can’t be diagnosed with a blood test or any sort of scan like an X-ray or an MRI. Instead, depression is diagnosed by a mental health professional by asking questions and looking at a person’s history to see if they have certain symptoms or experiences of depression. While depression is very different for each person, there are similarities in symptoms that help a professional identify whether or not someone might be depressed. These symptoms are as follows:
 Sad Mood – Feeling like there isn’t positive. Things seem very negative and bleak. Sometimes this includes excessive crying in a way that does not feel or seem ‘normal’.
 Changes in eating and weight - Depression is different for everyone, but oftentimes individuals who are depressed will see significant changes in weight and eating. For many this will look like an increase in appetite and an increase in weight. For others it means a loss of appetite and a significant loss of weight.
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