Sadness vs depression: everyday feelings vs mood disorders and the adaptative value of sadness

This article aims to specifically review the differences between sadness and depression. Definitions and descriptions of depressive disorders do not always distinguish between depressive disorders from non- pathological mood states. If depressive symptomatology appears as a response to a life event such as bereavement, a diagnosis of depression may not be clear since these reactions represent normal and presumably adaptive reactions to such life circumstances. The challenge to face is to distinguish normal emotional reactions to everyday events from a set of psychiatric illnesses characterised by the presence of sadness. Some recent research studies point out some of the neurobiological correlates between sorrow and depression. This paper reviews new evidence for the need to distinguish sadness from clinical depression, supporting a different view. The issue is not only the different quality of depression or depressive episode and the symptoms associated to it, the present study also considered the adaptive value of sadness and related affects in general in specific clinical cases. Sadness has some positive functions and therefore an adaptive value; it increases the ability to solve challenges related to losses and harms, sadness also helps us to communicate our vulnerability and needs, sometimes avoid aggressions in hierarchical conflicts and modulates interventions that lead to recover from lost bonds. The answer to the questions involved in this problem will have an impact on the way psychiatry will be conceived, practiced and financed in the near future.