symptoms of depression

How is depression different from just feeling "down"?

Here are the major symptoms of depression:

• Persistent depressed, sad, anxious, or empty mood
  
• Feeling worthless, helpless, or experiencing excessive or inappropriate guilt
  
• Loss of interest and pleasure in activities that are normally enjoyable
  
• Decreased energy and chronic fatigue
  
• Loss of memory, difficulty making decisions or concentrating
  
• Irritability or restlessness or agitation
  
• Sleep disturbances--either difficulty sleeping, or sleeping too much
  
• Significant change in appetite or body weight
  
• Recurring thoughts of death, or suicidal thoughts or actions

If you experience at least five of these symptoms for two weeks or longer, you are considered to be depressed. Dysthymia is a disorder similar to depression. A child or adolescent has dysthymia when he or she is in a depressed mood or a year or longer and also shows two or more of the symptoms of depression.

Bipolar disorder (also called manic-depressive illness) consists of alternating manic and depressed episodes. The symptoms of a manic episode are

• Severe changes in mood--either extremely irritable or overly silly and elated
  
• Overly-inflated self-esteem; grandiosity
  
• Increased energy
  
• Decreased need for sleep--able to go with very little or no sleep for days without tiring
  
• Increased talking--talks too much, too fast; changes topics too quickly; cannot be interrupted
  
• Distractibility--attention moves constantly from one thing to the next
  
• Hypersexuality--increased sexual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors; use of explicit sexual language
  
• Increased goal-directed activity or physical agitation
  
• Disregard of risk--excessive involvement in risky behaviors or activities