Diagnosis and Psychotherapy of Depressive Disorders

Depressive disorders are very common and serious illness in many psychiatric practices. We are accustomed to normal depression in everyday life, but the pathologically depressive conditions are regarded as a seriously urgent illness by the majority of psychiatrists because of the high risk of suicidal or self-destructive behaviors. Diagnosis of depressive disorders is not a hard task with the exception of the cases of masked depression and secondary depression. Nonetheless we have experienced many unpredictable psychiatric accidents during the course of treatment for the depressives. Generally speaking, major depression shows a good response to antideressants, but a chronic course is the rule in dysthymic condition, and consequently we need psychothereutic intervention. Although psychiatry today is biologically-oriented, the necessity for psychotherapy is now accepted in practice. Bio-psycho-social model in modern psychiatry helps to understand the depressives with the multi-modal therapeutic approaches. Presumably I think we have to practice psychotherapy for the depressives at all times even when the biological cause of depression is clear. Depression is like a mixture of psycholological and biological phenomena.