Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings and

physical well-being. It may include feelings of sadness, anxiety, emptiness, hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt, irritability, or restlessness. Depressed people may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, or suffer cognitive impairments (e.g., difficulty concentrating, remembering details, making decisions . !hey may contemplate or attempt suicide. !heir weight may change dramatically. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, change in sleep patterns (e.g., waking in the middle of the night or early in the morning and being unable to fall asleep again , fatigue, loss of energy, and aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present."#$ Depressed mood is a normal reaction to certain life events, a symptom of many medical conditions (e.g., %ddison's disease, hypothyroidism , and a feature of certain psychiatric syndromes.
Mood disorders are a group of disorders considered to be primary disturbances of mood. Within them, major depressive disorder (MDD), commonly called "major depression" or "clinical depression", is a condition where a person has at least two wee s of depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all daily activities. !eople suffering bipolar disorder may also e"perience major depressive episodes. Dysthymia is a state of chronic depressed mood, the symptoms of which do not meet the severity of a major depressive episode. #utside the mood disorders, moderate chronic depressed mood is also commonly a feature of borderline personality disorder. $djustment disorder with depressed mood is a mood disturbance appearing as a psychological response to an identifiable event or stressor, in which the resulting emotional or behavioral symptoms are significant but do not meet the criteria for a major depressive episode.
According to Freud, the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind can come into conflict with one another, producing a phenomena called repression (a state where you are unaware of having certain troubling motives, wishes or desires but they influence you negatively just the same). In general, psychodynamic theories suggest that a person must successfully resolve early developmental conflicts (e.g., gaining trust, affection, successful interpersonal relationships, mastering body functions, etc.). in order to overcome repression and achieve mental health. Mental illness, on the other hand, is a failure to resolve these conflicts. here are multiple e!planations that fall under the psychodynamic "umbrella" that e!plain why a person develops depressive symptoms. #sychoanalysts historically believed that depression was caused by anger converted into self$hatred ("anger turned inward"). A typical scenario regarding how this transformation was thought to play out may be helpful is further e!plaining this theory. %eurotic parents who are inconsistent (both overindulgent and demanding), lac&ing in warmth, inconsiderate, angry, or driven

by their own selfish needs create a unpredictable, hostile world for a child. As a result, the child feels alone, confused, helpless and ultimately, angry. 'owever, the child also &nows that the powerful parents are his or her only means of survival. (o, out of fear, love, and guilt, the child represses anger toward the parents and turns it inwards so that it becomes an anger directed towards him or herself. A "despised" self$concept starts to form, and the child finds it comfortable to thin& thoughts along the lines of "I am an unlovable and bad person." At the same time, the child also strives to present a perfect, ideali)ed (and therefore acceptable) facade to the parents as a means of compensating for perceived wea&nesses that ma&e him or her "unacceptable". *aught between the belief that he or she is unacceptable, and the imperative to act perfectly to obtain parental love, the child becomes "neurotic" or prone to e!periencing e!aggerated an!iety and+or depression feelings. he child also feels a perpetual sense that he or she is not good enough, no matter how hard he or she tries. o the behaviorist, human behavior has nothing to do with internal unconscious conflicts, repression, or problems with object representations. ,ather, a behavioral psychologist uses principles of learning theory to e!plain human behavior. According to behavioral theory, dysfunctional or unhelpful behavior such as depression is learned. -ecause depression is learned, behavioral psychologists suggest that it can also be unlearned. In the mid ./01s, #eter 2ewinsohn argued that depression is caused by a combination of stressors in a person3s environment and a lac& of personal s&ills. More specifically, the environmental stressors cause a person to receive a low rate of positive reinforcement. #ositive reinforcement occurs when people do something they find pleasurable and rewarding. According to 2ewinsohn, depressed people are precisely those people who do not &now how to cope with the fact that they are no longer receiving positive reinforcements li&e they were before. For e!ample, a child who has newly moved to a new home and has conse4uently lost touch with prior friends might not have the social s&ills necessary to easily ma&e new friends and could become depressed. (imilarly, a man who has been fired from his job and encounters difficulty finding a new job might become depressed. In addition, depressed people typically have a heightened state of self$awareness about their lac& of coping s&ills that often leads them to self$critici)e and withdraw from other

people (e.g., depressed people may avoid social functions and get even less positive reinforcement than before). o ma&e matters worse, some depressed people become positively reinforced for acting depressed when family members and social networ&s ta&e pity on them and provide them with special support because they are "sic&". For e!ample, some spouses may ta&e pity on their depressed partners and start to do their chores for them, while the depressed person lays in bed. If the depressed person was not thrilled to be doing those chores in the first place, remaining depressed so as to avoid having to do those chores might start to seem rewarding. ,esearch suggests that 2ewinsohn3s theory e!plains the development of depression for some individuals, but not for all. raditionally, behaviorists did not pay much attention to people3s thoughts, perceptions, evaluations or e!pectations and instead focused solely on their e!ternal and directly observable and measurable behavior. hey did this not because they weren3t aware of these internal feelings and thoughts, but because they thought them relatively irrelevant to the process of influencing behavior, and too difficult to measure with any accuracy. It turns out that this position was too e!treme. More recently, research has shown that internal events such as perceptions, e!pectations, values, attitudes, personal evaluations of self and others, fears, desires, etc. do affect behavior, and are important to ta&e into account when doing therapy. As a result, old$fashioned "strict" behavioral approaches to treating depression are not as popular today as they used to be.

%ognitive theories rose to prominence in response to the early behaviorists& failure to ta e thoughts and feelings seriously. 'he cognitive movement did not reject behavioral principles, however. (ather, the idea behind the cognitive movement was to integrate mental events into the behavioral framewor .
*ognitive behavioral theorists suggest that depression results from maladaptive, faulty, or irrational cognitions ta&ing the form of distorted thoughts and judgments. 5epressive cognitions can be learned socially (observationally) as is the case when children in a dysfunctional family watch their parents fail to successfully cope with stressful e!periences or traumatic events. 6r, depressive cognitions can result from a lac& of e!periences that would facilitate the development of adaptive coping s&ills. According to cognitive behavioral theory, depressed people thin& differently than non$ depressed people, and it is this difference in thin&ing that causes them to become

depressed. For e!ample, depressed people tend to view themselves, their environment, and the future in a negative, pessimistic light. As a result, depressed people tend to misinterpret facts in negative ways and blame themselves for any misfortune that occurs. his negative thin&ing and judgment style functions as a negative bias7 it ma&es it easy for depressed people to see situations as being much worse than they really are, and increases the ris& that such people will develop depressive symptoms in response to stressful situations.