Major Depressive Disorder – Definitions and Diagnosis

This slide shows core definitions for depression based on World Health Organization’s ICD-10 classification system or the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV and DSM-5 system.

References:
NICE CG90. Depression in adults: recognition and management. 2009. Update Apri…

Reference:
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders 5th edition:  American Psychiatric Association. 2013

!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?-- References:
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders. 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 2013.

Jaeger J et al. Psychiatry Res 2006; 145:…

References:
McIntyre RS et al. Depress Anxiety 2013; 30(6): 515–527.

Hammar A, Ardal G. Front Hum Neurosci 2009; 3:26. doi: 10. 3389/neuro. 09. 026. 2009.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) describes nine depressive symptoms for diagnostic purposes.^{[APA, 2013]}

Depressed mood

• Patients may describe their mood as depressed, sad, hopeless, discouraged, or ‘down in the dumps’.^{[APA, 2013]} Alternatively, the patient may d…

The Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), which was designed to be sensitive to the effects of antidepressants, includes ten depressive symptoms, six of which are described as ‘core symptoms’.^{[Montgomery & Asberg, 1979; Bech et al., 2002]}

MADRS item 1. Appare…

This slide illustrates the typical course of illness for patients with depression. Discontinuing antidepressant treatment in the acute phase before full symptomatic remission drastically increases the likelihood of relapse of the original episode, and discontinuing treatm…

!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?-- Previous slide illustrates the typical course of illness for patients with depression; either receiving only acute-phase treatment or receiving longer-term treatment designed to prevent relapse. It also highlights…

The slide aims at giving a simple definition for the terms signs and symptoms. It also highlights that the criteria used in the diagnostic manuals cover all major signs and symptoms of depression.

Reference:
Shivani, et al. Alcohol Research & Health. 2002;26:90-8

The slide explains the difference between prevelance and incidence as key epidemiological terms. While prevalence is the number of persons with disease, in a given population, at a designated time, the incidence looks into the number of new persons with disease over a spe…

This slide gives definitions for key epidemiological terms used in studies to quantify the burden of a disease. Term defined are the Burden of disease (BoD), Quality adjusted life years (QALYs), Years of life lost (YLLs), Years lived with disability (YLDs), Disability adj…

References:
Nierenberg et al. J Clin Psychiatry 2003; 64 (suppl 15): 13–17; page 13 (‘Remission, relapse, recurrence’ section).

Riso et al. J Affect Disord 1997; 43 (2): 131–142.

Nierenberg & DeCecco. J Clin Psychiatry 2001; 62 (suppl 16): 5–9; page 8.

Frank et al. Arch G…

MDD is a chronic disorder, most frequently characterised by relapses and recurrences.^{[Frank et al., 1991]} Relapse can be defined as an episode of MDD that occurs within 6 months of response or remission;^{[Nierenberg & Petersen 2003; Riso et al., 1997]} theoretically, relaps…