History of depression

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In ancient Greece, disease was thought due to an imbalance in the four basic bodily fluids, or humors. Personality types were similarly thought to be determined by the dominant humor in a particular person. Derived from the Ancient Greek {{lang|grc-Latn|melas}}, "black", and {{lang|grc-Latn|kholé}}, "bile",{{cite book |author-link1=Henry Liddell |last1=Liddell |first1=Henry |author-link2=Robert Scott (philologist) |first2=Robert |last2=Scott |year=1980 |title=A Greek-English Lexicon |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=UK |isbn=0-19-910207-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/lexicon00lidd|edition=Abridged}} melancholia was described as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms by Hippocrates in his Aphorisms, where he characterized all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" as being symptomatic of the ailment.Hippocrates, Aphorisms, Section 6.23

Aretaeus of Cappadocia later noted that sufferers were "dull or stern; dejected or unreasonably torpid, without any manifest cause". The humoral theory fell out of favor but was revived in Rome by Galen. Melancholia was a far broader concept than today's depression; prominence was given to a clustering of the symptoms of sadness, dejection, and despondency, and often fear, anger, delusions and obsessions were included.{{cite journal |last=Radden |first=J |date=March 2003 |title=Is this dame melancholy? Equating today's depression and past melancholia |journal=Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=37–52 |doi=10.1353/ppp.2003.0081|s2cid=143684460 }}

Physicians in the Persian and then the Muslim world developed ideas about melancholia during the Islamic Golden Age. Ishaq ibn Imran (d. 908) combined the concepts of melancholia and phrenitis.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Jacquart |first=Danielle |title=The Influence of Arabic Medicine in the Medieval West |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science: Technology, alchemy and life sciences |editor-last=Rashed |editor-first=Roshdi |year=1996 |pages=980 }} The 11th century Persian physician Avicenna described melancholia as a depressive type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias.{{cite journal | author = Haque A | year = 2004 | title = Psychology from Islamic perspective: Contributions of early Muslim scholars and challenges to contemporary Muslim psychologists |doi=10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z | journal = Journal of Religion and Health | volume = 43 | issue = 4| pages = 357–377 [366] | s2cid = 38740431 }}

His work, The Canon of Medicine, became the standard of medical thinking in Europe alongside those of Hippocrates and Galen.S Safavi-Abbasi, LBC Brasiliense, RK Workman (2007), [http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/563098_1 The fate of medical knowledge and the neurosciences during the time of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire], Neurosurgical Focus 23 (1), E13, p. 3. Moral and spiritual observations also abounded, and in the Christian environment of medieval Europe, a malaise called acedia (sloth or absence of caring) was identified, involving a tendency of the will to low spirits and lethargy typically linked to isolation.{{cite journal |last=Daly |first=RW |year=2007 |title=Before depression: The medieval vice of acedia |journal=Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes |volume=70 |issue=1 |pages=30–51 |doi=10.1521/psyc.2007.70.1.30 |pmid=17492910 |s2cid=22080560 }}Merkel, L. (2003) [http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/psych-training/seminars/history-of-psychiatry-8-04.pdf The History of Psychiatry PGY II Lecture] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223231054/http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/psych-training/seminars/history-of-psychiatry-8-04.pdf |date=2010-12-23 }} (PDF) Website of the University of Virginia Health System. Retrieved on 2008-08-04

The seminal scholarly work of the 17th century was English scholar Robert Burton's book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, drawing on numerous theories and the author's own experiences. Burton suggested that melancholy could be combatted with a healthy diet, sufficient sleep, music, and "meaningful work", along with talking about the problem with a friend.{{sfn|Kent|2003|p=55}}{{cite web|title=The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton|work=Project Gutenberg|date=1 April 2004 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-8.txt |access-date=2008-10-19}}

During the 18th century, the humoral theory of melancholia was increasingly being challenged by mechanical and electrical explanations; references to dark and gloomy states gave way to ideas of slowed circulation and depleted energy.{{cite journal |author=Jackson SW |title=Melancholia and mechanical explanation in eighteenth-century medicine |journal=Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences |volume=38 |issue=3 |pages=298–319 |date=July 1983 |pmid=6350428 |doi=10.1093/jhmas/38.3.298}}

German physician Johann Christian Heinroth, however, argued melancholia was a disturbance of the soul due to moral conflict within the patient.

Eventually, various authors proposed up to 30 different sub-types of melancholia, and alternative terms were suggested and discarded. Hypochondria came to be seen as a separate disorder. Melancholia and melancholy had been used interchangeably until the 19th century, but the former came to refer to a pathological condition and the latter to a temperament.

The term depression was derived from the Latin verb {{lang|la|deprimere}}, "to press down".{{cite web |title=depress |website=Online Etymology Dictionary |url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/depress |access-date=June 30, 2008}} From the 14th century, "to depress" meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits. It was used in 1665 in English author Richard Baker's Chronicle to refer to someone having "a great depression of spirit", and by English author Samuel Johnson in a similar sense in 1753.{{cite news |author= Wolpert, L |title=Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wolpert-sadness.html|access-date=2008-10-30}} The term also came into use in physiology and economics.

An early usage referring to a psychiatric symptom was by French psychiatrist Louis Delasiauve in 1856, and by the 1860s it was appearing in medical dictionaries to refer to a physiological and metaphorical lowering of emotional function.{{cite journal |author=Berrios GE |title=Melancholia and depression during the 19th century: A conceptual history |journal=British Journal of Psychiatry |volume=153 |issue=3 |pages=298–304 |date=September 1988 |pmid=3074848 |doi=10.1192/bjp.153.3.298|s2cid=145445990 }} Since Aristotle, melancholia had been associated with men of learning and intellectual brilliance, a hazard of contemplation and creativity. The newer concept abandoned these associations and, through the 19th century, became more associated with women.

Although melancholia remained the dominant diagnostic term, depression gained increasing currency in medical treatises and was a synonym by the end of the century; German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin may have been the first to use it as the overarching term, referring to different kinds of melancholia as depressive states.{{cite journal |last=Davison |first=K|year=2006|title=Historical aspects of mood disorders |journal=Psychiatry |volume=5 |issue=4 |pages=115–18 |doi=10.1383/psyt.2006.5.4.115}} English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley proposed an overarching category of affective disorder.{{cite journal |last=Lewis |first=AJ| year=1934|title=Melancholia: A historical review |journal=Journal of Mental Science |volume=80 |issue=328 |pages=1–42|doi= 10.1192/bjp.80.328.1 |doi-access=free }}

In the 20th century, the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin was the first to distinguish manic depression. The influential system put forward by Kraepelin unified nearly all types of mood disorder into manic–depressive insanity. Kraepelin worked from an assumption of underlying brain pathology, but also promoted a distinction between endogenous (internally caused) and exogenous (externally caused) types.

The unitarian view became more popular in the United Kingdom, while the binary view held sway in the US, influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and before him Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.{{sfn|Parker|Hadzi-Pavlovic|Eyers|1996|p=11}}

File:Sigmund freud um 1905.jpg argued that depression, or melancholia, could result from loss and is more severe than mourning.]]

Freud had likened the state of melancholia to mourning in his 1917 paper Mourning and Melancholia. He theorized that objective loss, such as the loss of a valued relationship through death or a romantic breakup, results in subjective loss as well; the depressed individual has identified with the object of affection through an unconscious, narcissistic process called the libidinal cathexis of the ego.

Such loss results in severe melancholic symptoms more profound than mourning; not only is the outside world viewed negatively, but the ego itself is compromised.{{cite journal |vauthors=Carhart-Harris RL, Mayberg HS, Malizia AL, Nutt D |title=Mourning and melancholia revisited: Correspondences between principles of Freudian metapsychology and empirical findings in neuropsychiatry |journal=Annals of General Psychiatry |volume=7 |issue=1|pages=9 |year=2008 |pmid=18652673 |pmc=2515304 |doi=10.1186/1744-859X-7-9 |doi-access=free }} The patient's decline of self-perception is revealed in his belief of his own blame, inferiority, and unworthiness.{{cite book |editor-last=Richards |editor-first=A. |last=Freud|first=S. |title=11.On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psycholoanalysis |chapter=Mourning and Melancholia|pages=245–69 |publisher=Pelican |location=Aylesbury, Bucks |year=1984 |isbn=0-14-021740-1}} He also emphasized early life experiences as a predisposing factor.

Meyer put forward a mixed social and biological framework emphasizing reactions in the context of an individual's life, and argued that the term depression should be used instead of melancholia.

The DSM-I (1952) contained depressive reaction and the DSM-II (1968) depressive neurosis, defined as an excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive type of manic-depressive psychosis within Major affective disorders.{{cite book |title=Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-II |author=American Psychiatric Association |publisher=American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. |location=Washington, DC |year=1968 |chapter=Schizophrenia |chapter-url=http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-ii.pdf |access-date=2008-08-03 |pages=36–37, 40 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070820165422/http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-ii.pdf |archive-date=2007-08-20 }}

In the mid-20th century, other psycho-dynamic theories were proposed. Existential and humanistic theories represented a forceful affirmation of individualism.{{citation |author1=A. Freeman |author2=N. Epstein |author3=KM Simon |title=Depression in the family |year=1987 |pages=64, 66 |location=New York |publisher=Haworth Press}} Austrian existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl connected depression to feelings of futility and meaninglessness.{{cite book |author=Frankl VE |title=Man's search for ultimate meaning |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York, NY, USA |year=2000 |pages=139–40 |isbn=0-7382-0354-8}} Frankl's logotherapy addressed the filling of an "existential vacuum" associated with such feelings, and may be particularly useful for depressed adolescents.Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) [https://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:FrKYAo88ckkJ:www.materdei.ie/media/conferences/a-secular-age-parallel-sessions-timetable.pdf+%22Stan+Seidner%22&hl=en&gl=us "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology"]. Mater Dei Institute. pp 14-15.{{cite journal |author=Blair RG |date=October 2004 |title=Helping older adolescents search for meaning in depression |journal=Journal of Mental Health Counseling |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=333–347 |doi=10.17744/mehc.26.4.w8u9h6uf5ybhapyl }}

American existential psychologist Rollo May hypothesized that "depression is the inability to construct a future".{{cite web|author=Geppert CMA|date=May 2006 |url=http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/51281 |title=Damage control |work=Psychiatric Times |access-date=2008-11-08 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090517073217/http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/51281 |archive-date=2009-05-17}} In general, May wrote that depression "occur[s] more in the dimension of time than in space,"{{Harvnb |May|1994| p=133}} and the depressed individual fails to look ahead in time properly. Thus the "focusing upon some point in time outside the depression ... gives the patient a perspective, a view on high so to speak; and this may well break the chains of the ... depression."{{Harvnb |May|1994| p=135}}

Humanistic psychologists argued that depression resulted from an incongruity between society and the individual's innate drive to self-actualize, or to realize one's full potential.{{cite web |url=http://www.social-psychology.de/do/pt_maslow.pdf |title=Abraham Maslow: Personality Theories |access-date=2008-10-27 |last=Boeree |first=CG |year=1998 |publisher=Psychology Department, Shippensburg University}}{{cite book |author=Maslow A |title=The Farther Reaches of Human Nature |year=1971 |publisher=Viking Books |location=New York, NY, USA |pages=[https://archive.org/details/fartherreacheso000masl/page/318 318] |isbn=0-670-30853-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/fartherreacheso000masl/page/318 }} American humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that depression is especially likely to arise when the world precludes a sense of "richness" or "totality" for the self-actualizer.

Cognitive psychologists offered theories on depression in the mid-twentieth century. Starting in the 1950s, Albert Ellis argued that depression stemmed from irrational "should" and "musts" leading to inappropriate self-blame, self-pity, or other-pity in times of adversity.{{cite book|last=Ellis|first=Albert|title=Reason and emotion in psychotherapy|date=1962|publisher=Carol Pub. Group.|location=Secaucus, NJ|isbn=1559722487|edition=Rev. and update.}} Starting in the 1960s, Aaron Beck developed the theory that depression results from a "cognitive triad" of negative thinking patterns, or "schemas," about oneself, one's future, and the world.{{cite book|last=Beck|first=Aaron T.|title=Cognitive therapy of depression|date=1979|publisher=Guilford Press |location=New York|isbn=0-89862-000-7|edition=2nd}}

In the mid-20th century, researchers theorized that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain, a theory based on observations made in the 1950s of the effects of reserpine and isoniazid in altering monoamine neurotransmitter levels and affecting depressive symptoms.{{cite journal | last = Schildkraut | first = JJ|year=1965|title = The catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders: A review of supporting evidence |journal = American Journal of Psychiatry |volume=122 |issue=5| pages = 509–22|pmid=5319766 | doi=10.1176/ajp.122.5.509}} During the 1960s and 70s, manic-depression came to refer to just one type of mood disorder (now most commonly known as bipolar disorder) which was distinguished from (unipolar) depression. The terms unipolar and bipolar had been coined by German psychiatrist Karl Kleist.

The term major depressive disorder was introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s as part of proposals for diagnostic criteria based on patterns of symptoms (called the Research Diagnostic Criteria, building on earlier Feighner Criteria),{{cite web |vauthors=Spitzer RL, Endicott J, Robins E |year=1975 |url=http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1989/A1989U309700001.pdf |title=The development of diagnostic criteria in psychiatry |access-date=2008-11-08 |archive-date=2005-12-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051214203223/http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1989/A1989U309700001.pdf |url-status=dead }} and was incorporated into the DSM-III in 1980.{{cite journal |vauthors=Philipp M, Maier W, Delmo CD |title=The concept of major depression. I. Descriptive comparison of six competing operational definitions including ICD-10 and DSM-III-R |journal=European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience |volume=240 |issue=4–5 |pages=258–65 |year=1991 |pmid=1829000 |doi=10.1007/BF02189537 |s2cid=36768744 }} To maintain consistency the ICD-10 used the same criteria, with only minor alterations, but using the DSM diagnostic threshold to mark a mild depressive episode, adding higher threshold categories for moderate and severe episodes.Gruenberg, A.M., Goldstein, R.D., Pincus, H.A. (2005) [http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/50/35273078/3527307850.pdf Classification of Depression: Research and Diagnostic Criteria: DSM-IV and ICD-10] (PDF). Wiley.com. Retrieved on October 30, 2008.

DSM-IV-TR excluded cases where the symptoms are a result of bereavement, although it was possible for normal bereavement to evolve into a depressive episode if the mood persisted and the characteristic features of a major depressive episode developed.{{Harvnb |American Psychiatric Association|2000a|p=352}} The criteria were criticized because they do not take into account any other aspects of the personal and social context in which depression can occur.{{cite journal|vauthors=Wakefield JC, Schmitz MF, First MB, Horwitz AV|date=April 2007|title=Extending the bereavement exclusion for major depression to other losses: evidence from the National Comorbidity Survey|journal=Archives of General Psychiatry|volume=64|issue=4|pages=433–40|doi=10.1001/archpsyc.64.4.433|pmid=17404120|doi-access=free}} In addition, some studies found little empirical support for the DSM-IV cut-off criteria, indicating they are a diagnostic convention imposed on a continuum of depressive symptoms of varying severity and duration.{{cite journal|vauthors=Kendler KS, Gardner CO|date=February 1998|title=Boundaries of major depression: an evaluation of DSM-IV criteria|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9464194/|journal=The American Journal of Psychiatry|volume=155|issue=2|pages=172–77|doi=10.1176/ajp.155.2.172|pmid=9464194|s2cid=8102276 }}

The ancient idea of melancholia still survives in the notion of a melancholic sub-type. The new definitions of depression were widely accepted, albeit with some conflicting findings and views, and the nomenclature continues in DSM-IV-TR, published in 2000.{{Harvnb |American Psychiatric Association|2000a| p=345}}

There has been some criticism of the expansion of coverage of the diagnosis, related to the development and promotion of antidepressants and the biological model since the late 1950s.{{cite book |title=The Antidepressant Era |last=Healy |first=David |author-link=David Healy (psychiatrist)|year=1999 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |isbn=0-674-03958-0 |pages=42}}

• History of mental disorders
• Classification of mental disorders

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |title=Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision: DSM-IV-TR |last=American Psychiatric Association |publisher=American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. |location=Washington, DC |year=2000a|isbn=0-89042-025-4}}
• {{cite book|last1=Barlow |first1=D. H. |last2=Durand |first2=V. M. |title=Abnormal psychology: An integrative approach |edition=5th |publisher=Thomson Wadsworth |location=Belmont, CA, USA |year=2005 |isbn=0-534-63356-0}}
• {{cite book |last1=Beck |first1=Aaron T.|last2=Rush |first2=J. |last3=Shaw |first3=B. F. |last4=Emery |first4=G. |title=Cognitive Therapy of depression |publisher=Guilford Press |location=New York, NY, USA |year=1987 |orig-year=1979 |isbn=0-89862-919-5}}
• {{cite book |last=Kent |first=Deborah |year=2003 |title=Snake Pits, Talking Cures & Magic Bullets: A History of Mental Illness |publisher=Twenty-First Century Books |url=https://archive.org/details/snakepitstalking0000kent |url-access=registration |isbn=0-7613-2704-5}}
• {{cite book |last=Hergenhahn |first=B. R.|title=An Introduction to the History of Psychology |edition=5th |publisher=Thomson Wadsworth |location=Belmont, CA, USA |year=2005|isbn=0-534-55401-6}}
• {{cite book |last1=May |first1=Rollo |title=Discovery Of Being: Writings In Existential Psychology |date=1994 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0-393-31240-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u5BM8sqqTFcC}}
• {{cite book |title=Melancholia: A disorder of movement and mood: A phenomenological and neurobiological review |last1=Parker |first1=Gordon |author-link=Gordon Parker (psychiatrist) |first2=Dusan |last2=Hadzi-Pavlovic |first3=Kerrie |last3=Eyers |year=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0-521-47275-X}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:history of depression}}

Category:Major depressive disorder

Category:Mood disorders

Depression