Psychoanalytic Explanation For Mood Disorders (Depression And Bipolar Disorder)

Freuds commentary of notion focuses on the idea of button that the root cause of both depression lies in the loss of something love, whether it is a person or an object. Lowry (1984) added that this loss can be real or imaginary. However, some may motility what separates the overwhelming sadness caused by, say, the death of a loved one, and depression? The psychoanalytical approach fails to answer this. In PJ Claytons study, widows and widowers were studied for a year subsequently the death of their spouses.While depression brought close by the death of a loved one is excluded as being a depressive episode by near psychologists, Clayton found that 45% of his subjects fit the criteria for diagnosis of depression. In reaction to the loss, Freud believed the depressive whence take ons feelings of self hatred, and begins to blame themselves for the loss. Freud also believed feelings of self hatred develop from the depressives thoughts about unresolved conflicts which submit often been repressed to the unconscious.Psychoanalytic explanations find it especially strong to explain the cyclical nature of bipolar disorder, and mood disorders such as SAD and post natal depression they only seem to energise an explanation for depression. Melanie Klein, a post Freudian, claims that whether an individual loses his or her self treasure depends on the quality of the individuals relationship as an infant with his or her cause during the starting year of keep.If an individual doesnt have positive experiences with his or her overprotect during the first year of life, then a predisposition of depression may be planted. This also links in with the ideas of theorists such as Bowlby. there is research to back this up, linking adverse early experiences to greater likelihood of maturation a mood disorder later in life e. g.Foltyn et al (1998) who found in a study of Polish medical students that 25% of examined students had depression symptoms and that these stude nts were exposed significantly more frequently to early minus experiences than students without depression. However, the approach has been criticised for being as well deterministic. How do we explain how some individuals who have experienced trauma and separation in early childhood dont develop depression and go on to lead happy, normal lives, as shown in various case studies?Freud also believed that too many positive experiences during the first year of life (oral stage) could set an individual up for developing depression later on in life. He believed that if a child is nurtured too much over indulged as an infant they could become fixated at the oral stage. The individual may develop hassles later in mature life because he or she is used to receiving excessive amounts of attention as a child and perhaps not as much in adult life, so may feel rejected, unloved, and thus become depressed.A lot of the psychoanalytic explanation is very difficult to test empirically. Freuds sta ges of psychosexual development advance at an unconscious level, which makes it difficult to test. Psychoanalytic explanations give insufficient heaviness to the role of biologic factors in the development of mood disorders. The evidence regarding familial factors, the role of neurochemicals and the effectiveness of anti-depressant drugs, appears to be ignored by psychoanalysts.A key power to the psychoanalytic approach is that they claim their therapy targets the underlying causes of the disorder, which other treatments dont do. They claim that biological treatments, such as drugs and ECT, treat the symptoms not the underlying causes they simply masque of disguise the underlying problems. Psychoanalytic treatments tackle those problems which are usually root in some significant and on going psychological problem which has its origins on early experiences perhaps making it more effective.