When Was Depression Identified as Disease?

Mental depression is a disease that cripples many throughout the world, and only in recent decades have we classified it as a genuine mental disorder rather than just a case of the blues. Depression wasn't diagnosed in doctor's offices until the 1950s, and it took until 1980 for the disease to appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).

Definition

• Depression is a collection of symptoms that revolve around a general feeling of unhappiness or grief. Symptoms include a change in sleeping or eating patterns, feelings of hopelessness and weight gain or loss. Crying, aches and pain, and a loss of libido also are depression symptoms.

Ancient Times

• Although depression wasn't an acceptable diagnosis in the medical world until the 20th century, references to this condition date as far back as the Bible. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates even pegged a term for the disorder: melancholia. In those times, people believed depression was linked to bad spirits or an imbalance of "humors," or fluids of the body. In fact, melancholia means "black bile," one of the four humors used to describe bodily functions in ancient medicine.

17th Century to 19th Century

• Literature continued to refer to depression, and science and philosophers continued to explore the illness. The black bile theory persisted until the 17th century, when another theory emerged. Dualism, known as the separation of the mind and body, dominated depression theories until the 20th century. In dualism, something in one's physical environment creates maladies in the mind. Thinkers of the 19th century also considered depression to be an inherited emotional weakness.

20th Century

• Sigmund Freud, known as the godfather of psychoanalysis, changed prevailing ideas of dualism when he asserted that brain dysfunction was the source of depression. Psychoanalysis is the treatment of mental health through the talking out of thoughts, akin to the image of lying on the couch most people picture when they hear the word "therapist." In addition to brain dysfunction, Freud also linked guilt and conflict to depression.

Modern Times

• By the 1950s and '60s, depression was viewed in two categories: a disorder of the mind and a reaction to external stimuli. By the 1970s and '80s, treatment practices shifted to focus to the symptoms themselves rather than a condition as a whole. Modern treatments are a combination of treating external issues through psychoanalysis and biological issues through medications such as antidepressants. Mental health continues to mystify the medical world, and there is no hard-and-fast rule for diagnosing and treating patients.