http://www.stomponstep1.com/mooddiso...
SKIP AHEAD:
0:31 – Mood Disorder (Affective Disorder) Definition
1:09 – Euthymia and the Mood Continuum
3:36 – Depression, Major Depressive Disorder and Suicide
7:51 – Dysthymia
8:08 – Adjustment Disorder
8:57 – Bereavement and Grief
10:02 – Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Blues & Postpartum Psychosis
10:50 – Mania and Bipolar Disorder
12:20 – Type 1 vs. Type 2 Bipolar and Cyclothymia

Mood Disorders which are also known as Affective Disorders, are a collection of psychiatric conditions that involve a pervasive distortion of one’s emotional state or affect. This should not be confused with normal fluctuations in mood. Everyone has periodic, mild changes in their affect as a result of their circumstances. Mood disorders have more extreme changes in mood that are often unrelated to an individual’s circumstances. However, mood disorders are characterized by periods of normal or nearnormal affect and function in between more severe mood “episodes.”

Euthymia can be thought of as a neutral or “normal” mood. This is when a person isn’t particularly happy or sad. Psychiatrically healthy individuals spend most of the time in a euthymic state, but a “normal” patient will have times when they feel happy or sad. In certain circumstances a healthy individual may even have transient feelings of elation or mild depression. For example, if a person has a really stressful work situation or they win the lottery it would be normal for them to have a big change in their mood. However, these emotions do not lead to a loss of function and do not persist. Changes in affect become pathologic when extreme emotions are felt, these feelings persist and a loss of function is involved.

Mood can be thought of as a continuum ranging from extremely happy (mania with psychosis) to extremely sad (depression with psychosis and/or suicidal ideation). Mood disorders can primarily be differentiated based on where they lie on this continuum.

And I think being able to look at that continuum in a picture helps simplify things a lot. So here is what we are going to be working towards during this video. I’m sure this is a bit intimidating, but don’t worry we are going to break it down piece by piece to make it really simple.

If you want a high resolution version of this picture for your notes or because the video looks a bit fuzzy on your screen you can click on this orange box here to be taken to my website where that is available.

As you can see in the middle of our mood continuum is euthymia or neutral mood. Then as you move in either direction you get more extreme moods. On the right we have happy affect and to the left we have sad affect. Healthy individuals will spend most of their time in a state of Euthymia, but they will have occasional fluctuations from being sad to happy so this is our range of normal mood. Way out to the right we have extremely happy mood which is mania with psychosis and way out to the left with have depression with suicidal ideation or psychosis. The extremes of the continuum have a loss of function where the individuals ability to function at home and at work or school are inhibited. As we move forward we will plot each mood disorder on this same picture.

Depression can involve a loss of interest in previously pleasurable activities (AKA Anhedonia), low selfesteem, hopelessness and fatigue. Depressed individuals may sleep way more or way less than normal, have decreased libido, eat way more or way less than norma or have a decreased ability to concentrate. Moderate to severe cases can cause a Loss of Function. In severe cases depression can lead to suicidal ideation or psychosis. Psychosis is going to involve things like delusions and hallucinations but we are going to save that topic for the next video in the series

Usually when somebody says a person has depression what they really mean is that person has Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and they don’t want to waste all of those extra syllables. So Major Depressive Disorder gets shortened to Depression. But you need to recognize that depression is as emotion and MDD is a medical diagnosis with specific criteria.

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ERRATA: I misspelled "Dysthymia" on the video so I tried to correct it by adding a pop up box on the video. Thanks to user "Gilbert Flowerface" for pointing out the error