Depression

• Behavioural Characteristics of Depression include differences in Activity levels, sleep and eating behaviours, aggression and self harm.
• Differences in activity levels make a person lethargic, less energetic and struggle to get out of bed. They may also withdraw from work, education and social life.
• Disruption of eating behaviours may lead to weight loss or gain.
• As a behavioural characteristic of depression, A person struggling with depression may be irritable and aggressive. This aggression could be self-directed, leading to self harm.
• Emotional characteristics of depression include Lowered mood, Anger and lowered self-esteem
• Lowered mood may involve sadness, legargicness and Worthless or empty self description.
• Lowered self-esteem may lead to self-loathing
• Cognitive characteristics of depression include poor concentration, dwelling on the negative and absolutist thinking
• Poor concentration may lead to poor memory, decision making issues and inability to stick to a task.
• Dwelling on the negative is when a person only focuses on the negative aspects of a situation, they ignore the positive and exercising a bias towards recalling unhappy events.
• Absolutist thinking is when a person sees things as either all-good or all-bad. This causes an unfortunate event to be seen as an absolute disaster.
• Reduced activity levels are a behavioural characteristic of depression
• Disruption to sleep and eating behaviours is a behavioural characteristic of depression.
• Aggression and self-harm is a behavioural characteristic of depression
• Lowered mood is an emotional characteristic of depression
• Anger is an emotional characteristic of depression
• lowered self-esteem is an emotional characteristic of depression
• poor concentration is a cognitive characteristic of depression
• Dwelling on the negative is a cognitive characteristic of depression
• Absolutist thinking is a cognitive characteristic of depression
• Poor memory is a cognitive characteristic of depression