DYSTHYMIA

Generality

Dysthymia is a mood disorder which, due to the symptoms caused, closely resembles depression.

Dysthymia is also known as dysthymic disorder, persistent depressive disorder, or neurotic depression.
The precise triggers are unknown; most likely, difficult and dramatic life experiences play a fundamental role.
The diagnosis of dysthymia requires several diagnostic tests, including a "careful psychological evaluation and a careful physical examination.
To be able to heal, you need: adequate psychotherapy, drug therapy based on antidepressants and, finally, considerable collaboration on the part of the patient.

What is dysthymia?

Dysthymia is a mood disorder similar to depression, but of lower severity and with a tendency to persist over time
The dysthymic patient, in fact, manifests the same symptoms as depressed people, but in a milder and, often, more lasting form.
Despite the lower severity, dysthymia is considered a chronic problem, where chronic means that the symptoms recur every day (except for temporary interruptions) for a certain period of time (in this case, at least two years). instead, it manifests itself with much more serious symptoms, but which resolve in a shorter period of time, and then eventually recur. Suffice it to say that, for the diagnosis of depression, the persistence of a severely depressed state of mind is required to at least two weeks.

SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION

What are the classic symptoms of depressed people?
People with depression feel depressed, sad, empty, hopeless, worried, helpless, guilty, irritated, restless, and offended; they also have an aversion to any activity, suffer from loneliness, insomnia, hypersomnia, digestive problems, low energy, lack of appetite or excessive appetite and suicidal obsessions.
The expressions of depression, therefore, are numerous and, at times, very different from each other.

LOCATION IN THE DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS (DSM)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a collection of all the peculiar characteristics of known psychic and mental illnesses, including the respective criteria required for diagnosis.
Until 2013, dysthymia was treated as a mood disorder other than depression, albeit with some similarities.
In the "latest edition, released in 2013, however, the dysthymic disorder was included in the chapter dedicated to depression, as if it were a subtype of the latter". The reason for the change is related to the similarity and overlap of the most characteristic symptoms.

EPIDEMIOLOGY

According to some statistical studies covering the entire globe, dysthymia affects approximately 105 million people each year (ie 1.5% of the world population).
It can affect individuals of any age, including children. Women are the subjects who get sick most frequently.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME

The term "dysthymia" was coined in 1970 by Dr. Robert Spitzer and took the place of the previously used "depressive personality". Today, the disorder is also known as neurotic depression or dysthymic disorder, although DSM-5 recently introduced the new term Persistent Depressive Disorder (persistent depressive disorder).