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"Clinical Depression is more serious, triggered by a chemical imbalance in the brain. This is a biological disorder of the brain, but it has psychological symptoms. This type of depression need not follow any sad, stressful or upsetting event; it can kick in for no apparent reason at all other than a change in one’s brain chemicals."
"Normal Depression is often triggered by an event or circumstance in which you react to emotionally, such as the death of a loved one. This type of depression is psychological because you are emotionally “reacting” to something that has happened."
Is this correct or is clinical depression just depression that is more serious and is not specifically due to chemical imbalance? I’m kind of confused about all this.
I thought that was right but I’m doing research for school and I keep getting mixed information. Most people say clinical depression in depression which lasts more than a few weeks, but that didn’t sound like the proper meaning.
Okay, here’s the thing. It depends on who you get your information from.
But here are the basics, reactive depression is depression that occurs after a traumatic or saddening life experience like after a death in the family.
Clinical depression is any depression that lasts longer than 2 weeks. Read the DSM criteria for a major depressive episode aka clinical depression. That means that reactive depression can turn into clinical depression including the chemical imbalance. While there may be something to be said about a genetic link to depression, we don’t really know at this point. There is no such thing as strictly genetic/biological depression. All depression is psychological in nature.
No one knows if it’s the chemical imbalance or the depressive thoughts and behavours that come first. What people do know is that sometimes antidepressant medication works in lifting depressive symptoms. Another thing that is known is that cognitive behavourial therapy has the exact same success rate as antidepressant medication for clinical depression except that CBT does not have the high relapse rate. If you look at brain scans of people before and after CBT, you can see physical changes in the brains. Their brains no longer look depressed and they no longer report depressive symptoms to the same degree. It’s interesting that people can know this, but still claim that clinical depression is just a chemical imbalance in the brain like it’s some sort of physical brain disorder like epilespy. It’s clearly not.
health/teen_depression_help
