Depression (affective disorder)

Symptoms
Affective symptoms – The way people react emotionally and their ability to feel emotions.

• Feeling of sadness and despair, or;
• An absence of feeling, feeling “empty”
• Fail to display interest and find pleasure in everyday activities.
• Feeling of guilt about a real or imagined even can also occur.

Cognitive symptoms – The ability to rationalise, remember and concentrate at their usual level. The thoughts individuals have about themselves, other people and their intentions.

• Impaired thought and logic process
• Low levels of concentration
• Negative self schema
• Paranoia
• (Thoughts of) committing suicide

Behavioural symptoms – The way that the individual behaves, activities they participate in or withdraw from and psychomotor movements (e.g. moving or speaking slowly).

• Severely depressed person can stop socializing, lose interest in sex and stop taking care of themselves.
• Everyday activities may take much longer to complete.
• Withdrawal from friends and family members.
• Attempt suicide.

Physical (somatic) symptoms – Physical changes that the individuals may experience.

• Headaches, stomach upsets (and other aches and pains).
• Palpitations
• Lack of energy
• Loss of appetite leading to weight loss.
• Sleep disturbance, insomnia.
• According to Marsella, collectivist cultures might display more somatic symptoms.

Prevalence

• Affecting 15% of population, 80% of the people who had depression is likely to get it more than once.
• 2 weeks or more of continuous low mood to be considered as depression.
• Woman are 70% more like to depression in their lifetime.
• SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is likely to happen between the ages of 18 to 30.
• 90% of people who have a type of depression are unipolar not bipolar.
• Men are less likely to report feelings of depression.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) (anxiety disorder)

Symptoms
International Classification of Diseases 10th edition (ICD 10)

• Recurrent obsessional thoughts or compulsive acts.
• Obsessional thoughts
• Ideas, images, impulses that enter the individual’s mind repeatedly in a stereotyped form.
• Extremely distressing, the sufferer often tries, unsuccessfully, to resist them.
• Compulsive acts
• Stereotyped behaviours that are repeated.
• They are not inherently enjoyable neither do they result in the completion of particularly useful tasks.
• e.g. excessive washing or cleaning.

Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition (DSM IV)

• Obsessions
• Recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses or images that are experienced.
• Preoccupation with sexual, violent or religious thoughts.
• Compulsions
• Repetitive behaviours that are aimed at reducing distress or preventing dreaded event or situation.
• Extreme hoarding
• Nervous rituals (e.g. opening and closing a door a certain number of times before entering or leaving a room)
• For most of the time during the current episode, the person does not recognize that the obsessions and compulsions are excessive or unreasonable.

Prevalence

• Fourth most common mental disorder
• In US, one in 50 adults suffers from OCD
• About one third to one half of adults with OCD report a childhood onset of the disorder (suggests that the continuum of anxiety disorders across the life span).
• OCD is equally common in men and women. But the disorder’s onset is reported to occur earlier in men than women.
• Lifetime prevalence in community surveys of about 2-3% (Robins et.al. 1984).