Psychopathology
Psychopathology is a very fascinating topic and vital to study since it explains the untypical phenomenon or set of uncommon phenomena by characterizing them. These are interesting because most aspects are what we face in real life experience
What is a mood disorder?
Several factors can precipitate a depressed mood. Most of us, at one point, must have felt or had a depressed mood from time to time. It may be due to arguing with a friend or even breaking up with a partner. (Brown et al., 1998). However, mood disorder always involves more serious change or alteration in the mood for a more extended period. When that happens, there is still an intense disturbance of mood, which persists and often can result in a severe problem in the relationship and also affects work performance. There are two types of mood disorder; Unipolar which is major depression and bipolar
What is the difference between unipolar and bipolar depression?
Unipolar depression frequently occurs and at an alarming rate and it’s most common and much higher in women than men, while bipolar depression is less common. According to the NCS-R, the lifetime risk of developing this kind of disorder is always one percent. Another major difference is that bipolar depression has no significant difference in its prevalence rate in either men or women (Miklowitz & Johnson., 2008)
Which is more challenging to treat and why?
According to the antidepressant treatment test done, the response in both unipolar and bipolar depression was compared in DSM-5. According to the clinical experience, it is suggested that antidepressants are most effective in the short term for bipolar depression than unipolar. The test indicated that the manic switch took place in only bipolar depression but occurred much less in that patient who took mood stabilizers. The analysis also showed that cycle acceleration for those who took mood stabilizers occurred only in bipolar depression. This test shows that bipolar depression is complicated to treat because there was an unfavourable cost ratio for the antidepressant treatment of bipolar (Smith, D.et al., 2008)