Diagnosis and Classification of Mood Disorders

Abstract

The diagnostic syndromes of mania and depression have been given the general designation of mood disorder because mood disturbances are their core symptoms (Whybrow 1997). The basic nature of mood disorders is that they are episodic and recurrent, with discrete, symptom-free intervals. The most common classification scheme distinguishes between two main types of mood disorder, each having different gender, genetic, and course characteristics: when mania and depression occur, usually following each other in the same individual, the syndrome is called bipolar disorder (formerly manic-depressive disorder). Bipolar disorder is distinguished from unipolar illness, whereby one abnormal mood state, usually depression (major depressive disorder), occurs alone. Unipolar mania, in which individuals experience only manias in their life, is relatively rare compared to unipolar depression (Angst and Grobler 2015). Despite long-standing debate and research and conceptualization efforts, unipolar mania, including both pure mania and mania with mild depression, has not been integrated as its own diagnostic entity in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association 2013) or in the forthcoming revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11; due by 2018); it is still subsumed under the category of bipolar disorder (Angst 2015).