Q.__________ personality is characterised by proneness to depression.

Mood Disorder Symptoms: From Everyday Feeling to Clinical Condition

Everyone has moods. You wake up grumpy, feel a lift after good news, or sink into sadness after a loss. That is normal emotional weather — it changes, it passes, and it fits the situation.

A mood disorder is when that weather turns into a climate. The emotion becomes too intense, lasts too long, or shows up without any real cause. More importantly, it starts to damage your life — your sleep, your work, your relationships, your ability to function.

The core idea is simple: a symptom of a mood disorder is a disturbance in emotional state that is severe enough to cause distress or impairment, and that is not simply a reaction to a life event.

The Two Poles: Depression and Mania

Mood disorders sit on a spectrum with two extremes.

Depression is the low pole. The key symptoms are not just sadness. They include:

• Loss of interest or pleasure in almost everything (anhedonia)
• Significant weight change or appetite disturbance
• Sleep problems (too much or too little)
• Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt
• Trouble concentrating or making decisions
• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide

For a diagnosis, these symptoms must be present most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks.

Mania is the high pole. It is not just being happy or energetic. It is a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least one week (or less if hospitalisation is needed). Symptoms include:

• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• Decreased need for sleep (feeling rested after 3 hours)
• More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
• Racing thoughts or flight of ideas
• Distractibility
• Increase in goal-directed activity (social, work, sexual) or psychomotor agitation
• Excessive involvement in risky activities (spending sprees, foolish investments)

The Precise Clinical Statement

In diagnostic terms, a mood disorder symptom is any of the above-listed features that:

1. Represents a change from the person's baseline functioning
2. Is present for a specified duration (e.g., 2 weeks for depression, 1 week for mania)
3. Causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning
4. Is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition

The two major categories are:

• Major Depressive Disorder — one or more major depressive episodes, no manic/hypomanic episodes
• Bipolar Disorder — at least one manic episode (Bipolar I) or hypomanic episode (Bipolar II), usually with depressive episodes

Why This Matters for Exams

You will be asked to differentiate between:

• Normal sadness vs. major depression
• Normal happiness vs. mania
• Depression vs. bipolar depression (the depressive phase looks identical — the difference is the history of mania)

The symptoms themselves are straightforward. The challenge is recognising when they cross the line from experience to disorder. That line is drawn by duration, severity, and impairment — not by the emotion itself.