Chronic depression, also referred to as dysthymia or chronic depression is a mood disorder. Chronic depression is defined any feelings of hopelessness and unhappiness that persists for more than two weeks, and it is different from psychotic depression. With psychotic depression, the illness is accompanied by some form of psychosis, such as delusions, detachment from reality, and hallucinations. In addition to emotional disturbances, chronic depression is also like to sensory disturbances, such as atypical facial pain.
The Limbic System and Depression
Depression is a disorder that affects a person’s mood, and to study the molecular aspects of depression, researchers have focused on a particular part of the brain, the limbic system. When the …show more content…
For example, consistently moving away, for young children may consequently cause the child to lose touch with prior friends. In addition, the child might not have the social skills necessary to easily make new friends and could become depressed. Similarly, a woman who has been fired from her job and encounters difficulty finding a new job might become depressed.
In later dates behaviorists did not pay much attention to people's thoughts, perceptions, evaluations or expectations (Nemade, PH. D, Reiss, PH. D, & Dombeck, PH. D, 2007). Instead they focused on their external and directly observable and measurable behavior. Medical doctors were aware of the internal feelings and thoughts, but because they thought of them as relatively irrelevant to the process of influencing behavior, and they were too difficult to measure with any accuracy they were never closely examined (Nemade et el., 2007). More recently, research has shown that internal events such as perceptions, expectations, values, attitudes, personal evaluations of self and others, fears, desires, and other things do affect behavior, and are important to take into account when doing therapy. As a result, researchers feel that old-fashioned behavioral approaches to treating depression are not as popular today as they used to
The Limbic System and Depression
Depression is a disorder that affects a person’s mood, and to study the molecular aspects of depression, researchers have focused on a particular part of the brain, the limbic system. When the …show more content…
For example, consistently moving away, for young children may consequently cause the child to lose touch with prior friends. In addition, the child might not have the social skills necessary to easily make new friends and could become depressed. Similarly, a woman who has been fired from her job and encounters difficulty finding a new job might become depressed.
In later dates behaviorists did not pay much attention to people's thoughts, perceptions, evaluations or expectations (Nemade, PH. D, Reiss, PH. D, & Dombeck, PH. D, 2007). Instead they focused on their external and directly observable and measurable behavior. Medical doctors were aware of the internal feelings and thoughts, but because they thought of them as relatively irrelevant to the process of influencing behavior, and they were too difficult to measure with any accuracy they were never closely examined (Nemade et el., 2007). More recently, research has shown that internal events such as perceptions, expectations, values, attitudes, personal evaluations of self and others, fears, desires, and other things do affect behavior, and are important to take into account when doing therapy. As a result, researchers feel that old-fashioned behavioral approaches to treating depression are not as popular today as they used to