Depression
Depression Paper
Emmy Lou Gambrel
Axia College of University of Phoenix
In the United States some form of depression affects upwards of 10 percent of the population in any given year; whereas, only about 1 percent of adults worldwide are affected by bipolar disorders in the same timeframe (Nevid & Rathus, 2005). Unipolar depression and bipolar disorder affect people from all socioeconomic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, from all corners of the globe. Both disorders are indiscriminate obstructions to normal psychological wellbeing and given the prevalence of the disorders in the world, a more thorough understanding of the causes, symptoms, treatments, and differences between unipolar and bipolar disorders would logically be advantageous.
Unipolar Depression
According to the DSM-IV handbook depression is characterized as, “…a period marked by at least five symptoms of depression and lasting for two weeks or more” (Nevid & Rathus, 2005, 197). The symptoms related to depression are usually grouped into five areas of human operation: behavioral, cognitive, motivational, and emotional. The motivational aspects of unipolar depression include suicidal thoughts and a lack of drive to pursue normal, everyday activities; while, the cognitive and behavioral facets of depression are exhibited as a tendency to hold extremely negative views about oneself and a propensity towards less active, less productive lives. Lastly, the emotional component of depression plays itself out as feelings of sadness, dejection, and crying spells. Furthermore, during extreme forms of depression a person might hallucinate, have delusions, or lose touch with reality. Even though the symptoms of depression are pretty straightforward, discovering the underlying causes in the aftermath of the disorder is not so clear-cut. However, the causal factors of childhood sexual abuse, stressful life events, negative automatic thinking, chemical imbalances in the brain, an inherited...
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