Jacob Hankins
Psychology
Dr. Moran
29 November 2018
Persistent Depressive Disorder
Persistent Depressive Disorder, currently call dysthymia, is a type of mood disorder caused by almost the exact same things that would cause your normal depression disorder. This is a mood changing disorder in which the symptoms are persistent and tend to last longer and in some cases can even last for life. This term (PDD) was first used by Robert Spitzer, who uses the term in the 1970s as a replacement term to “depressive disorder. In the DSM, this disorder is listed as a serious state of chronic depression. This disorder usually lasts from 2 years in adults to around 1 year in children. Many people never realize that they are suffering from this disorder. They will say how they know that they are depressed and they believe that’s just who they are, but really they can get help for all of their symptoms. Many of the times someone has dysthymia, they are usually suffering from multiple disorders and they don’t even realize it. Most patients have dysthymia and another mental disorder that goes along with it. Switching from dysthymic moods to longer periods of hypomanic moods can also be seen as a type of bipolar disorder.
Some signs and symptoms of Persistent Depressive Disorder could be being depressed for extended periods of time. Being depressed for long periods of time also usually comes with being diagnosed with other symptoms other than just being depressed for long periods of time. Some of these symptoms could be that such as insomnia, hypersomnia, low energy, or hopelessness. If it is hard to concentrate or someone has trouble making decisions, these are also other symptoms that are looked at for someone who has dysthymia or PDD. Some other cases of symptoms or signs can be cases where someone is not having faith in themselves and not finding any joy and happiness in activities that they do doing their life. Many of these symptoms are hard to see in someone’s everyday life, which is why it is so common but still very hard to diagnose on someone. It is very easy for patients to disguise what they’re really feeling and keep everything hidden in social situations. Diagnosis also is not the easiest thing when other disorders are having the same symptoms and doctors have a hard time whether or not it’s PDD or other disorders with similar symptoms. A major case of PDD would be that of a suicide patient who is suffering from a lot of depression.
There is no known biological causes to getting PDD. Some research points heavily toward genetic inheritance, while other research points to no known genetic inheritance. There is usually a higher rate of a child having PDD when the parent or someone closely related to them also have depression. There has been studies with fraternal and identical twins who have PDD. In this study it showed that the identical twins were more likely to both have dysthymia rather than the two fraternal twins having it. Many modern causes consist of having another disorder or anxiety related problem. Some of these problems could consist of drug addiction, alcoholism, or cyclothymia. Many times when one is dealing with PDD they will have times when they are dealing with intense levels of depression. When these intense levels of depression come through, this is called dealing with double depression. Double depression is when a patient, who is already dealing with symptoms from there original dysthymia, they encounter another major depressive episode which is worse than their original depression. Patients with double depression tend to report back a lot of levels of hopelessness. Many kinds of cognitive therapies have been opened up for the people with these needs. Antidepressants and different types of cognitive therapies are usually used to treat patients with dysthymia. Researchers say you should treat the dysthymia first and then work toward the major depression episode. Even simple things such as eating better and sleeping better can have an affect on the way you’re feeling.
In the Pathophysiology report of PDD, we can see that while the brain structures in woman are different from woman with PDD than those without, this can reveal that there may be a developmental difference between them. There is some evidence for a genetic basis of all types of depression. One way of testing if one were to have dysthymia was to take two men, not knowing if either one of them has dysthymia or not and ask them to name as many adjectives as they can. On a regular basis the men who had PDD would name a significant more amount of sad or depressing terms throughout the test. Also, throughout these tests you saw that the individuals with healthy tests showed to be healthier around the board and individuals with bad results, most likely had bad results in everything else.
There is not a certain way of avoiding this depression disorder. Many suggestions are made my doctors and health experts, some of these involving watching children who are at risk. The most common age for depression to start is through memories when you are younger. Watching children who are at risk can help them make sure they are getting what they need to be happy and control themselves. Things like stress control, self-esteem, and working on increasing your resilience will help younger children have a lessened chance of becoming affected by PDD.
Treatment methods are usually simple and stay the same throughout treatment. These methods consist of medications, therapy, and combination therapies. Medications such as SSRIs are among the first types of medication to be used in the treatment of this disorder. Antidepressant medication is among the top medications used to treat PDD. It usually takes about 8 weeks for a patient to start seeing the effects of the medication take place. Types of therapy that are commonly used throughout the duration of this disorder are psychotherapy, self help and support groups and any other treatment that would boost your confidence or self esteem. Other treatments would be using both the medication treatment and the therapy treatments at the same time. This could also help with a quicker recovery and and easier lifestyle. There is usually a high rate of patient resistance with these treatments. Because it is so common that these patients believe that being depressed is just natural in their life and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Since this is so common there is other ways of treatment that can be altered and fixed for some patients if they need it.
Dysthymia is globally a disorder that affects a lot of people. Some interesting results about how many people are affected yearly is that there are around 105 million people a year who have this disorder. It is a little more common in men than in women. It is about 1.3 percent off men and about 1.8 percent for women who have this disorder.
In conclusion, we can see that PDD or Persistent Depressive Disorder is a mood disorder that has the same physical and cognitive problems as depression and this makes it a confusing disorder to diagnose because it has such close related problems to other disorders that are common around the world. Treatments such as medication and therapy should be used by those who need them. These treatment methods could be fatal if one takes dosages of medication that is not suitable for themselves? Therapy on. The other hand is simpler and will benefit most people’s live regardless?