Fable

When I write about depression, I have in mind the concept of persistent sadness. Big-D Depression is a subset of persistent sadness and pathological. It causes tremendous distress. The alleviation and treatment of Big-D Depression is of substantial importance.

Excluding this sub-set, we are likely to find persistent sadness is part of our innate means for recovering from loss and distress.

Pulled from my response on [citation needed]:

1. Depression is really code for some maladaptive or pathological condition rather than the whole class of persistent sadness which occurs after significant loss (small-d depression in a sense). The study and alleviation of this big-D Depression is of great importance.

2. Most of the studies are of big-D Depression and probably have a disproportionately small cohort of small-d depression sufferers.

3. Big-D Depression is a condition, but small-d depression is more of a symptom.