Bad Mood, Depressed Mood

Depressed (bad) mood is the hallmark of all depressions. The depressed mood is always there in every form of depression, it only needs to be elicited.

What is depressed mood?

Depressed mood is a special emotional state. It sustains for an extended period. Depressed or bad mood is characterized by sadness, low morale, misery, discouragement, hopelessness, emptiness, unhappiness, distress, pessimism and other related affects.

These feelings, cannot easily be distinguished from the normal emotional states experienced by all human beings when faced with life’s adversities. However, depressed mood differs in some aspects that would justify considering it not only as quantitatively more intense than the normal emotional response but also as a qualitatively distinct state that qualifies as a psychopathological symptom.

What is the difference between depressed mood and everyday sadness?

The main differentiating features of the depressed mood from the everyday
emotional reaction of sadness are as follows:

• The intensity and the depth of the pain become so unbearable that the patient often wishes the death. The sadness and the associated feelings spread all domains of life.

• The depressed mood lasts long enough to be felt as an unalterable state.

• It may occur spontaneously.

• Even if it has been triggered by a life event, it evolves autonomously (irrespectively from the cause).

• Depressed mood resists being changed through reasoning or encouragement.

• It is associated with guilt, self-reproach, suicidal thoughts and a variety of unpleasant and painful bodily sensations.

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