What types of depression are there?

Overview of types of depression

Depressions are already long known diseases. Over the years, numerous scientific studies have provided new insights into the disease, its course and neurobiological processes. Thus, the perception of the disease has changed.

The number of originally defined subtypes has also been significantly reduced until today. The first type of depression is called unipolar depression. This type is divided into mild, moderate and severe depressive episodes.

The fourth subtype is the severe depressive episode with psychotic symptoms. In addition to the symptoms of severe depression, delusions and hallucinations are also present. Unipolar depressions are one-directional and separate from bipolar disorder (e.g. manic-depressive illness).

The next major classification group is that of recurrent depressive disorder. This is therefore a recurrent depressive episode. Patients who have already had more than one depressive episode are always recurrent depressive disorder.

This group also includes winter depression, a seasonal depression. A third group of depressions are the persistent affective disorders. Here the symptoms are often not as severe as in “real” depression or mania.

On the other hand, the symptoms persist over a much longer period of time and do not occur in episodes. Subforms of this group are cyclothymia and dysthymia. In cyclothymia, the mood regularly alternates between depressive phases and phases of elevated mood.

However, the extent of the symptoms does not reach that of pure depression or pure mania. Dysthymia is a chronic, i.e. long lasting, depressive mood, also with weak symptoms. Bipolar disorders are closely related to depression.

Here, episodes of depressive mood and manic episodes occur alternately. The bipolar disorders have subclasses. A distinction is made between whether the episode is manic or depressive and whether it is accompanied by psychotic symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations.

A group belonging to the depressive disorders in a broader sense is that of reactions to severe stress and adaptation disorders. These include acute stress reactions, post-traumatic stress disorders and adaptation disorders. Theoretically, one could also mention in a broader sense the psychological disorders in the puerperium.

These include, for example, depressive episodes that occur for the first time within 2 years after the birth of the child. Apart from the subclasses mentioned above, there are no other subdivisions of depression in the international classification of diseases (ICD-10). Terms such as neurotic depression, reactive depression or somatogenic depression used to be used in the past, but are now obsolete.