What is Depression? From the Viewpoint of Modern Psychiatry / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

Depression is heterogeneous in terms of its clinical aspect, diagnosis, cause, neurobiology, drug response and course. Because of the heterogeneity of major depressive disorder (MDD), DSM-IV classified MDD into various subtypes, such as melancholic, atypical, severe with psychotic feature, severe without psychotic feature, with postpartum onset, with catatonic feature, early-onset, late-onset, chronic, single or recurrent. In spite of the efforts of many clinicians trying to classify and explain the nature of MDD, depression is still qualified as a syndrome rather than a disease. When we see patients with MDD in clinical setting, we still use several subtypes of classical classification in order to comprehend the patient better. Psychiatrist should treat the patients with MDD according to their specific features and integrate the various information from them. For these reasons, depression is regarded as a complicated disease to identify and treat. Therefore, mental health professionals, especially psychiatrists should be trained on these diverse characteristics of MDD and it is recommended that the treatment of depression should be referred to a psychiatrist.