Depression: Clinical picture and etiopathogenesis

Depression can occur as a symptom or a syndrome in different psychiatric disorders or as independent entity. Concept of depressive states includes a great number of clinical phenomena (from feeling sad, hopeless and helpless through disturbance of sleep, appetite, libido and suicidal thoughts), which depending on magnitude and quality determine whether the depressive disorders is on neurotic or psychotic level. Integrative model gives a more complex approach to affective disorders and depression is understood as a result of interaction of three groups of variable, on biochemical, empirical and behavioral level. Integrative model of depression assumes a negative feedback mechanism in which diencephalon is a place where processes are crossed.