Clinical depression is a chronic condition, but it usually occurs in episodes, which can last several weeks or months. You'll likely have more than one episode in your lifetime. This is different from persistent depressive disorder, which is mild or moderate depression that lasts for at least two years.
Persistent depressive disorder (PDD).
PDD is continuous depression that lasts for two years or more. You may also hear it called dysthymia or chronic depression.
According to the Mayo Clinic, patients with untreated long-term depression are more prone to sleep disruptions, heart disease, weight gain or loss, weakened immune systems, and physical pain. Depression can result in an unhealthy cycle.
Results: The self-reported lifetime prevalence of medical diagnosis of depression was 9.9% (95% CI 9.5% to 10.2%).
Persistent depressive disorder is a type of depression. It's less severe than major depressive disorder — another type — but it's ongoing. It's defined as lasting at least two years in adults and at least one year in children and teens.
It's estimated that 15% of the adult population will experience depression at some point in their lifetime.
Untreated clinical depression is a serious problem. Untreated depression increases the chance of risky behaviors such as drug or alcohol addiction. It also can ruin relationships, cause problems at work, and make it difficult to overcome serious illnesses.
In general, nearly everyone with depression has ongoing feelings of sadness, and may feel helpless, hopeless, and irritable. Without treatment, symptoms can last for many years.
For some people, depression might only be episodic and overcome within a matter of weeks or months. However, for others diagnosed with major depression , the condition could persist for years, affecting their lifestyle and quality of life.
Research suggests that depression doesn't spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, and stressful life events.
Ongoing depression likely causes long-term changes to the brain, especially in the hippocampus. That might be why depression is so hard to treat in some people. But researchers also found less gray matter volume in people who were diagnosed with lifelong major depressive disorder but hadn't had depression in years.
At What Age Is Depression Most Common? According to CDC data from 2019, 21% of adults experiencing any depressive symptoms in the most recent two weeks were between 18 and 29 years old. This incidence is the largest among all adult age groups.
Although psychotic depression itself cannot evolve into schizophrenia, when severe depression is untreated or undertreated, it's possible for the resulting distress and side effects to trigger an underlying psychotic disorder, such as schizoaffective disorder.
In some severe depression cases, this biological age was 10–15 years older than the chronological age.
Each person's recovery is different. Some recover in a few weeks or months. But for others, depression is a long-term illness. In about 20% to 30% of people who have an episode of depression, the symptoms don't entirely go away.
Some have suffered bouts of depression, others have not. Some have had more than their share of adverse life events, while others have had an easier time of it.
Depression may cause the release of glucocorticoid in the brain, a type of steroid that can damage the hippocampus and other areas of the central nervous system. When this occurs, you may experience symptoms associated with neurocognitive disorder (dementia), such as memory loss.
A major depressive disorder, TRD describes depression that has failed to respond to at least two different antidepressant treatments. Anyone who has experienced depression knows how inescapable and hopeless it can feel.
For example, depression is more common among women than men. The median age of onset for depression is 32 years, meaning that half of people who will ever have a depressive episode will have had their first episode by this age.
The available data suggests that age three is the lowest threshold at which childhood depression appears, but that doesn't mean it can't be identified earlier or that there aren't risk signs earlier.