From the viewpoint of quantifying mental health or mood science, depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest, i.e. the affected person is no more able to regulate her moods and the mental state of chronification can set in. Consequently, depression is a symptom as chronifying mental and physical response to a condition, e.g. learned helplessness.

Psychologists first described learned helplessness in 1967 after a series of experiments on animals, suggesting that their findings could apply to humans. Learned helplessness leads to increased feelings of stress and depression. For some people, it is linked with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The most common treatment is therapy, especially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT helps people overcome these types of challenges by changing how they think and act.

Ref/

Article Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights From Neuroscience

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You Keri Mobbs wrote:

Depression used to be called meloncholia. After a guy won a nobel prize in conditioning, the world had two massive wars within years. Then it was labelled "the Great Depression".

Skinner, John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, are considered to be the pioneers of modern behaviorism. You seem to mean Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1904)?

The inventor of the phrase, the Great Depression, is Lionel Robbins, a British economist who lived during the Depression. In 1934, after Hoover’s tenure in office, Robbins wrote the book, The Great Depression, which contains what some historians, notably David F. Burg, consider to be the fist usage of the phrase we now use to to describe the economic meltdown on the 1930s. Although Hoover did not quite invent the term the Great Depression, he did play a role in its formation.

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An expansion of bank credit creates a boom that cannot be sustained, and the inevitable collapse of the boom is the depression. Robbins traces this boom/bust cycle, detailing the central bank policies of the 1920s. If the policy gurus at the Fed had read and understood this book, they could have spared us the economic havoc of recent years.

https://mises.org/library/book/great-depression

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Keri Mobbs Economics is still very blind to the workings of human psychology as it uses linear models for accounting purposes, which are unable to understand the cyclical movements of human economic activity.

The mentioned Great Depression was, imo, a full central banking failure (systems error), which is also state failure (planning agency put over the market forces).

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PS/

There have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking. '' The reason Will Rogers made this statement is central banking is so important because the money supply is so important.

Depression is described in scientific terms via a multiaxial classification system in the series of Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals published regularly by the American Psychological Society. So far this thread mixes two languages, the DSM language with the lay person language, such as in dictionary definitions. This mix then becomes very confusing for everyone outside of Psychology and Psychiatry. Best to dive deep into DSM 3, 4, and 5 to see how this scientific language has evolved along with the knowledge developed to see what it really says, and to see just how clear and specifically we can now discuss Depression in terms of its underlying states, traits, and symptoms. But knowledge can only be shared if we use the same language. Most branches of science create a new language so that the new theories can be so focused and clear. This is also why we have the DSM series.

My apologies, DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association, not the American Psychological Association. The latter produces an excellent guide for standardizing scientific writing. I encourage everyone not yet familiar, to read the DSM sections on Depression and other mood disorders.

Geoffrey Rolland Waghorn

I guess im trying to see beyond the current booklets and complex labels,they've seemingly forgotten why they came to be and where they stem from.

For example, pretend we know nothing, because nothing seems to work. We start with:

"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."

+

"Melancholia or melancholy is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions." (note the word Mood, depression is a piece of mood is equates to low moods - define mood and think of modern medicine and advice when it comes to moods)

+

"The term “depression” came into use in the 19th century, originally as “mental depression,” to describe lowering of spirits, and came to replace melancholia as a diagnosis."

+

"It was 19th Century German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who began referring to various forms of melancholia as “depressive states,” due to the low mood that defines it. (low mood again) (NOTE: A bit Nazi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Kraepelin )

And to add a side note:

"There are two main interrelated criticisms of DSM-5: an unhealthy influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the revision process. an increasing tendency to “medicalise” patterns of behaviour and mood that are not considered to be particularly extreme." + It's American not British, and the NICE guidelines vary yet again.

My questioning is around the meaning of what it is to feel depressed = set of low moods/symptoms. What is means to feel depressed is not a thing to cure because depression is a moving action. A process formed by other things that could be cured or helped which in turn will erase the sense of depression. Philosophically, one cannot cure or help depression, only the symptoms and causes that create it can be cured.

By having people prescribe drugs and advice for depression is like saying they have a drug or advice to sort your life or problems out. They then convert life problems into axienty, or other conditionings, but all seem to derive from fear or uncertainty, which is also a piece of fear. Thereby, declaring one can "fix" "cure" resolve" depression is a lie. They cannot fix fear, only train one to not fear. By focusing on other symptoms and conditions, not the depression itself.

Depression is almost like a measurment, it is not really a condition or disorder, but it can be a symptom of many other things. But ££ and medicines are highly attached to "depression" as a condition and disorder but not a symptom, why is that?

I am trying to write this up better each time, it's complex and i might not be making my point very clear.

But upon following the history of psychology, how it hatched, how it moved around the world, the labels all being changed during the World War periods, and the ever since non evidence of curing depression, only evidence of purposely creating it through fear or neglect, plus inventing other things to include it, including finacial benefits systems and drugs, it begins to feel like some people have created things on purpose, and that purpose is hindering not helping western society.

Out of interest I think, what other condition a symptom AND a condition AND a disorder? What is the point in this style of catagorising people's behaviours, feelings and lives?

I am sorry I contributed to this thread now. I tried to steer it back into what we know about how Clinical Depression is defined by mental health scientists. But the previous writer seems determined to replace formal knowledge and the latest definitions with conspiracy theories. Perhaps we need to be discussing not the signs, symptoms, and diagnostic criteria for clinical depression, but for psychosis? Delusions, including conspiracy theories can also be symptoms of thought disorder. This issue is partly due to the fact that it is not possible to have a sensible discussion of the nosology of depression by using terms and definitions from a lay persons language, from historical definitions, or from terms from the dictionary. That is why we have DSM, showing the current form of language scientists use, so we each know how all the terms and concepts are defined and related. Without DSM, misinformation, imprecision, and conspiracy theories can easily prevail.

Geoffrey Rolland Waghorn While the term "depression" is useful for clinical communication and treatment planning, it may be more accurate to view it as a descriptive label for a set of symptoms rather than a distinct condition.

- This is not a conspiracy, is it simply a scientific mindset looking at things differently in hope to improve systems/beliefs and structures. At some point someone told you leeches don't work and that was embraced. So i don't get why the extreme personal "bully" approach has been selected to talk AT me.

If you're not up for thinking about things this way, stop thinking. Don't sit there trying to bad mouth my efforts though. Doesn't make your profession look like roses with attitudes like that does it.

Argument: Depression is a Construct of Multiple Underlying Conditions

You Mr Mobbs have now successfully shut me down. Congrats. No matter what I say you will come back with pages of untested and unrefined opinion, that may or may not be relevant to any real issue under this topic. Your thoughts sound quite delusional and conspiracy based (anti-psychiatry and anti pharmacology), and that is likely to discourage people that need effective treatments, from getting them. Perhaps that is your goal. Yet despite your dismissing depression as a social-cultural construct, it is in fact a major mental disorder that often runs in families, takes various forms, has complex comorbidities, and can be exacerbated or caused by adverse events, such as trauma and sudden personal loss. It is true that we have a lot more to learn about it, but your school of thought, (very similar to that of RD Laing in the 1960s) who also began by ignoring what we already know, is so unhelpful because we have been there many times before. Major depression can be a scary life long and life threatening disease that creates a huge burden on families as well as the person most affected. If you want to make a useful contribution to this topic, you could actually read the DSM and more recent evidence from the ongoing empirical debate about how depression can be better defined. You could then adopt the common language used to discuss clinical disorders like depression, and join the discussion in a useful way. Otherwise, myself and many others on research gate cannot productively engage with you.