Mood Disorders

A mood disorder is a mental health condition that primarily affects your emotional state. It’s a disorder in which you experience long periods of extreme happiness, extreme sadness or both. Certain mood disorders involve other persistent emotions, such as anger and irritability.

It’s normal for your mood to change, depending on the situation. However, for a mood disorder diagnosis, symptoms must be present for several weeks or longer. Mood disorders can cause changes in your behavior and can affect your ability to perform routine activities, such as work or school.

Two of the most common mood disorders are depression and bipolar disorder.

What are all the mood disorders?

Mood disorders include:

• Depression and its subtypes.
• Bipolar disorder and its subtypes.
• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
• Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.

Depression

Depression (major or clinical depression) is a common mental health condition. Depressive symptoms include feeling sad or hopeless. The condition can also cause difficulty with thinking, memory, eating and sleeping. For a person to receive a diagnosis of clinical depression, symptoms must last for at least two weeks.

There are several different types of depression, including:

• Postpartum depression (peripartum depression): This type of depression occurs during pregnancy or after the end of a pregnancy in women and people assigned female at birth (AFAB). Women and people AFAB experience hormonal, physical, emotional, financial and social changes after having a baby. These changes can cause symptoms of postpartum depression.
• Persistent depressive disorder: This is a chronic form of depression that must last for at least two years. Symptoms may occasionally lessen in severity during this time. It’s less severe than major depressive disorder, but it’s ongoing.
• Seasonal affective disorder (SAD): This type of depression occurs during certain seasons of the year. It typically starts in the late autumn or early winter and lasts until spring or summer. Less commonly, SAD episodes may also begin during the late spring or summer. Symptoms of winter seasonal affective disorder may resemble those of major depression. They tend to disappear or lessen during spring and summer.
• Depression with psychosis: This is a type of severe depression combined with psychotic episodes, such as hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others don’t) or delusions (having fixed but false beliefs). People who experience depression with psychosis have an increased risk of thinking about suicide.