What Is Clinical Depression?

Depression varies in severity from mild and moderate with transient feelings of unhappiness, to severe, long-lasting depression. Clinical depression, also known as major depressive disorder (MDD), is the most serious type of depression.

Symptoms can be severe enough to significantly interfere with your daily activities, such as work or university, and the way you manage and experience relationships with other people.

Here are 5 categories of clinical depression:

Melancholic Depression

It involves continuous low mood and feelings of hopelessness. You may experience decreased pleasure in daily activities, low mood, and physical disturbances, such as sleep difficulties and extreme weight loss.

Atypical Depression

It involves symptoms of Increased appetite or weight gain, sleepiness or excessive sleep, fatigue and weakness, moods that are strongly reactive to environmental circumstances, and feeling extremely sensitive to rejection.

Catatonic Depression

It causes you to remain motionless and speechless for a long period of time. Inability to move properly, abnormal or fast movements

Postpartum Depression

Many parents might experience symptoms of depression after having a child.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year exhibit depressive symptoms at the same time each year, most commonly in the winter. People may sleep too much or have little energy.

Clinical depression is often a chronic condition, meaning you have been struggling in this way for some time. This can embed your thinking, behaviours and emotions in a rigid system, making it difficult for you to experience things in a different way.

Our multidisciplinary team has experience of working with complex presentations of clinical depression. Here are some ways treatment can help you overcome depression:

Psychotherapists – talking therapy to help you understand your triggers of depression and find new ways to enjoy life and relationships

Nutritional Therapy – diet, lifestyle and health interventions to balance your body chemistry

Psychiatry – medical assessment and antidepressants