symptoms

Depression is a form mental illness with more than just a feeling of sadness, discouragement, frustration and loss. It affects the person's behavior, thoughts and outlook that impede the person's normal activities. Depression is expressed with several symptoms that range from mild to severe cases and one of the most intense and severe case is psychotic depression.

Patients who are diagnosed with psychotic depression often end up in mental hospital for prolonged treatment and medication. Psychotic depression does not only display common symptoms of depression but also experience hallucinations and delusions. This means that they tend to see and hear things that are not real and experience irrational fears and thoughts. In many cases, patients with psychotic depression have the tendency to be paranoid. They also tend to believe that they do not own their thoughts and that their thoughts are heard by other people. Patients with this severe depression have the tendency to experience bipolar depression, suicidal tendencies and possible recurrent episodes.

Aside from these major symptoms that distinguish psychotic depression from other types, the following depressive symptoms are still displayed: irrational anxiety, physical agitation, hypochondria, inability to fall asleep, has high and low level of energy, cognitive impairment and constipation.

The cause of psychotic depression is not entirely known but most experts believe that it has something to do with family history of severe depression and psychotic illness. It is also believed that psychotic behavior is associated with the person's high levels of cortisol - a steroid hormone which is usually released in times of stress by the adrenaline gland.

Unlike other types of depression, psychotic depression requires treatment in the hospital for close supervision and monitoring until symptoms have significantly declined. A combination of psychotherapy and medication is given to the patient. Studies show that effective medication for this case is tricyclic antidepressant and antipsychotic medications. In cases with bipolar disorder, lithium is also given as medication and was proven to be effective and beneficial. For cases when the two major treatments are not enough, electro convulsive therapy may be employed.

Although psychotic depression is highly treatable and patients tend to recover from treatments given, it is always recommended that there are follow-ups done for monitoring since there is high risk of depressive symptoms to recur. Once depressive symptoms are observed again, due treatment is given immediately. Patients with this history of depression has high tendency to be suicidal.