Major Depressive Disorder, Dysthymia

Depression can come in many different flavors. The standard of depression – when we say major depressive disorder – is referring to a condition which is severe but remitting, meaning that people will feel depressed for a number of weeks, perhaps months, sometimes even longer at a time, but then it goes away and they may feel better for quite a while and then there’s a risk that it could dip down again for a while. But it’s a block of depressed, not depressed, depressed, not depressed, for sustained periods of time. There are other though, models of depression that are seen as well. Persistence Depressive Disorder (formerly known as Dysthymia) is more of a low grade but chronic form of depression where rather than having these blocks of yes, no, yes, no all the time – just feeling really not good but not necessarily at the same level of severity as someone who is having a major depressive disorder.