Are all Depressions the same?

No. Depression is now believed to be a wide range of related disorders. Some depressions are transient and may pass without intervention. Others may be resolved in a few weeks or a couple of months by some form of therapy, and never occur again. However, many people’s depression is likely to reappear, and in some cases to be chronic (lasting longer than two years).

Some forms of depression are combined with hypomania, contrasting the low mood with spells of extremely high mood. This condition, called bipolar disorder, can often be treated very successfully. Others, often involving delusions, are described as psychoses, and although these are serious, distressing and sometimes very difficult to treat, they are fortunately comparatively rare.