Posted by Elizabeth on November 8, 1999, at 0:10:12
In reply to Re: atypical depression -how typical?, posted by Noa on November 7, 1999, at 19:25:07
> My very uneducated guess is that the "typical" presentation of depression ocurrs more frequently in men than in women, and that early studies of depression used male subjects.
It appears that older people are more likely to have typical features; that melancholic features occur about equally in both sexes; and that atypical features occur about twice as often in women as in men. (My guess is that adolescents are likelier to present with reversed vegetative signs than adults are.)
> Some researchers are grouping the unipolar depressions with bipolar illness--because the "atypical" version is akin to the depressive states of those with bipolar.
Not exclusively (bipolar folks can have "typical" depressions too). I think this mainly applies to bipolar II (which is itself sort of a fuzzy category).
> some researchers are also looking at the so-called mood based personality disorders as cyclical mood disorders, with hypomania presenting more often as irritability, and depression being of the "atypical" type.
This is mainly borderline personality disorder, yes? (Maybe histrionic too.)
> I think this is a positive move, because the name "personality disorder" sounds like a character fault, which has moral overtones, in the person who is suffering.
I think it is sort of supposed to sound pejorative. (It is, after all, the category that includes antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.)
poster:Elizabeth
thread:4802
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991108/msgs/14787.html