Psychotic Depression - Signs and Symptoms

Psychotic depression is estimated to affect one in every 250 people. People with this condition normally experience delusions which are beliefs or feelings that are not real. Bipolar patients may experience this condition during depressed states. Episodes of this disorder normally last for a defined amount of time. Sometimes however, they can be chronic.

This condition is considered a severe form of major depression. Patients with mild or moderate depression may also exhibit psychotic symptoms. Paranoid delusions and delusions of guilt are the most common symptoms of this illness. Some of the patients who experience delusional guilt believe that they are being punished for past misdeeds.

A person with psychotic depression will also have delusions that include those in which he or she is concerned that something is terribly wrong with his or her body. The person will claim that something is wrong with his or her physical health. People with this condition normally experience more delusions than hallucinations. While some people with this illness don't experience hallucinations, others do. Other symptoms of this disorder are agitation and difficulties in falling asleep.

This condition is sometimes mistaken for schizophrenia. It is also sometimes mistaken for schizo affective disorder. Schizophrenia normally has more delusional symptoms. Other symptoms that characterize schizophrenia are loose associations, flight of ideas and echolalia which is repeating what others say. Word salad or meaningless speech is another symptom of this condition. Psychotic depression is mostly treated using antidepressants and anti psychotics. Researchers are also trying to develop a new treatment that will directly deal with the pathophysiology of the condition.

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Depression with psychotic - as seems harder to treat symptoms

Monday, December 6 HealthDay News)-people with depression who also have a psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices or believing that others are conspiring against them, are less likely to respond to antidepressants, finds a new study.

Also found the bipolar disorder do not seem to be associated with resistance to treatment in patients with depression, a finding that defies common theory that some cases difficult to treat depression really are unrecognized bipolar disorder, add researchers.

The study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between bipolar disorder and the results of treatment between 4,041 patients with depression. Patients received for the first time the antidepressant citalopram (Celexa), followed by up to three treatments of passage of the next, depending on your answers.

At the beginning of the study, 1,198 (30%) of patients said they had experienced at least one psychotic symptom - such as believing that had special powers or were being controlled conspired against - in the previous six months. These patients were significantly less likely to respond to treatment.

In addition, 1,524 patients (38.1%) said that they had experienced at least a symptom of bipolar disorder in the previous six months. These symptoms, irritability associated with results of ill-treatment.

But several indicators commonly associated with the disorder bipolar - including the history of manic symptoms and a family history of the condition - not teamed up with patient responses to antidepressants, said the researchers.

The study was published online on December 6, in the archives of general psychiatry.

"Considered as a whole, our results cast doubt claim often unrecognized bipolar disorder is widespread in clinical practice, and in particular at treatment resistant major depressive disorder," the researchers, led by Dr. Roy H. Perlis, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts general hospital concluded in a press release from the journal.

"Screening for bipolar disorder among psychiatric patients remains important, as does taking into account the individual factors of risk such as family history or age at the beginning." However, our findings indicate that, in the majority of individuals presents a major depressive episode without a previous episode manic or hypomania, unrecognized bipolar does not seem to be a determining factor of resistance to treatment, "said researchers."

For more information

The National Institute of mental health of the United States has more information about depression.

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