depression characteristics

• Emotional characteristics


  Lowered mood

  Anger

  Lowered self esteem
• Lowered mood

  This is a defining emotional element of depression and people with depressive lowered moods refer to themselves as 'worthless' and 'empty
• Anger


  people with depression experience extreme anger which can be directed towards themselves or others (on occasion such emotions can lead to aggressive self harm behaviour also why they appear under behavioural characteristics)
• Lower Self esteem


  People with depression tend to have lower self esteem as they like themselves less than usual(this can be extreme to the point of self hate).
• Cognitive characteristics of depression

  Poor concentration

  Attending to and dwelling on the negative

  Absolutist thinking
• Poor concentration


  people may find themselves unable to stick to a task or make decisions like they usually would and this would affect their everday lives
• Attending to and dwelling on the negative

  people are more likely to pay attention to the negative aspects of situations (seeing the gllass as half empty rather that half full). they also have bias towards recalling unhappy events rather that happy ones
• Absolutist thinking


  They tend to have black and white thinking(where they see that something is either all bad or all good)
• Behavioural characteristics of depression

  Activity levels

  Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour

  Agression and self harm
• Activity levels

  people tend to have reduced activity levels of energy making them lethargic(drowsiness, lack of energy). Has a knock-off effect of withdrawal. In some cases depression can lead to the opposite effect- psychomotor agitation (where indivduals struggle to relax)
• Disruption to sleep and eating behaviour

  A person may experience insomnia(reduced sleep), premature waking, or hypersomnia(an increased needfor sleep).Similarly appetitie changes which could lead to weigth gain or loss
• Aggression and self harm

  People with depression are often irritable and may become verbally/physically agressive towards others or themselves (resulting in cutting or suicide).