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Physiognomy of the melancholic temperament (drawing by Thomas Holloway, c.1789, made for Johann Kaspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy). Melancholia or melancholy (from Greek: µέλαινα χολή melaina chole, [1] meaning black bile) [2] is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood ...
Depressive personality disorder, also known as melancholic personality disorder, is a former psychiatric diagnosis that denotes a personality disorder with depressive features. Originally included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-II , [ citation needed ] , depressive personality disorder was removed from the DSM-III and DSM-III-R .
Atypical depression can be differentiated from melancholic depression via verbal fluency tests and psychomotor speed tests. Although both show impairment in several areas such as visuospatial memory and verbal fluency, melancholic patients tend to show more impairment than atypical depressed patients.
The four temperament theory is a proto-psychological theory which suggests that there are four fundamental personality types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Most formulations include the possibility of mixtures among the types where an individual's personality types overlap and they share two or more temperaments.
Melancholy may refer to: Melancholia, one of the four temperaments in pre-modern medicine and proto-psychology, representing a state of low mood; Depression (mood), a state of low mood, also known as melancholy; Major depressive disorder, a mood disorder historically called melancholy
Melancholia and melancholy had been used interchangeably until the 19th century, but the former came to refer to a pathological condition and the latter to a temperament. [3] The term depression was derived from the Latin verb deprimere, "to press down". [12] From the 14th century, "to depress" meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits.
The melancholic and choleric, however, shared a sustained response (dryness), and the sanguine and phlegmatic shared a short-lived response (wetness). This meant that the choleric and melancholic both would tend to hang on to emotions like anger, and thus appear more serious and critical than the fun-loving sanguine, and the peaceful phlegmatic.
Psychotic major depression (PMD), or simply psychotic depression, is the term for a major depressive episode, in particular of melancholic nature, wherein the patient experiences psychotic symptoms such as delusions or, less commonly, hallucinations. These are most commonly mood-congruent (content coincident with depressive themes).