Depression

Depression
(Outline Research Paper)
Laiza B. Carlo
Ana G. Méndez University System
Workshop Three
March 14, 2011
EDUC 618

Introduction:
According to Radden 2003) Aretaeus of Cappadocia noted that sufferers of depression
were "dull or stern; dejected or unreasonably torpid, without any manifest cause". The humoral
theory fell out of favor but was revived in Rome by Galen.Melancholia was a far broader
concept than today’s depression; prominence was given to a clustering of the symptoms of
sadness, dejection, and despondency, and often fear, anger, delusions and obsessions were
included (Radden, 2003).

Furthermore Haque (2004) stated that Influenced by Greek and Roman texts physicians
in the Persian and then the Muslim world developed ideas about melancholiaduring the Islamic
Golden Age. Ishaq Ibn Imran combined the concepts of melancholia and phrenitis. The 11th
century Persian physician Avicenna described melancholia as a depressive type of mood disorder
in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias.

In addition, Radden (2003) reported that eventually, various authors proposed up to thirty
different subtypesof melancholia, and alternative terms were suggested and discarded.
Hypochondria came to be seen as a separate disorder. Melancholia and Melancholy had been
used interchangeably until the 19th century, but the former came to refer to a pathological
condition and the latter to a temperament (Radden, 2003)

Wolpert, (2008) in his study "Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression describedthat the term depression was derived from the Latin verb deprimere, to press down.
From the 14th century, to depress meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits. It was used in
1665 in English author Richard Baker's Chronicle to refer to someone having a great depression
of spirit , and by English author Samuel Johnson in a similar sense in 1753 (Wolpert, 2008).
The influential systemput forward by Kraepelin unified nearly all types of mood disorder
into manic–depressive insanity. Kraepelin worked from an assumption of underlying brain
pathology, but also promoted a distinction between endogenous (internally caused) and
exogenous (externally caused) types (Davison, (2006).

Otherwise, Carhart-Harris (2008) presented that the unitarian view became more popular
inthe United Kingdom, while the binary view held sway in the United States, influenced by the
work of Swiss psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and before him Sigmund Freud, the father of
psychoanalysis. Freud had likened the state of melancholia to mourning in his 1917 paper
Mourning and Melancholia. He theorized that objective loss, such as the loss of a valued
relationship through death or a romanticbreak-up, results in subjective loss as well; the
depressed individual has identified with the object of affection through an unconscious,
narcissistic process called the libidinal cathexis of the ego (Carhart-Harris, 2008).

Most recently, the American Psychiatric Association created The DSM-I (1952) that
contained depressive reaction and the DSM-II (1968) depressive neurosis. It wasdefined as an
excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive
type of manic-depressive psychosis within Major affective disorders. Finally, Goldstain and
Grunberg (2005), mention that the term Major depressive disorder was introduced by a group of
US clinicians in the mid-1970s as part of proposals for diagnostic criteria based on patterns ofsymptoms (called the Research Diagnostic Criteria, building on earlier Feighner Criteria), and
was incorporated in to the DSM-III in 1980. To maintain consistency the ICD-10 used the same
criteria, with only minor alterations, but using the DSM diagnostic threshold to mark a mild
depressive episode, adding higher threshold categories for moderate and severe episodes.

Literature...