It is primarily severely depressed mood and a loss of interest or pleasure in most of the day, nearly every.
It is accompanied by other symptoms such as feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, anxiety, worthlessness, guilt and/or irritability, changes in appetite and weight loss, problems concentrating, diminished ability to think or concentrate, insomnia and recurrent thoughts of death or attempts at suicide.
In other words, the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder simply require that the patient experience at least one Major Depressive Episode and that the episode is not part of some oater psychotic disorder and is not part of other kind of mood disorder containing manic elements.
Note that for Major Depressive Disorder to be considered recurrent, on needs only to determine that there was a period lasting at least 2 months on which the depressive symptomatology consistently fell below the five-symptom threshold for q Major Depressive Episode – not a 2-month period of full remission.
Major depressive episode
