Melancholia Not A Depression Disorder Alone

By Cara

Friday, March 19, 2010, 15:44

Melancholia, a kind of depression disease, but with unique characteristic is being rejected by psychiatrists as a depression disorder alone. Psychiatrists are urging authorities to list melancholia as a distinct disease of the mind in the 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Gordon Parker, a professor of psychiatry, warned that treatment of Melancholia patients with psychotherapy or counseling, could lead to higher rates of suicide.

Gordon says, "We believe that melancholia is a separate diagnosis, a separate condition that requires quite different treatment to most of the other depressive conditions that are able to be diagnosed. At the moment we feel that many treatments are just being given in a universal, non-specific way. We need a more rational model. What that will actually do to the sales of antidepressants is, I think, predictable, but not likely to be an expansion."

Even after Gordon's warning, critics don't seem to be quite impressed. Ian Hickie, the executive director of the Brain and Mind Institute, said, "It's an old idea that at the end of the day hasn't really stood up against other biological markers to show us different causes of depression and the ability of providing different treatments."