[VietRebel]

"Normal Depression is often triggered by an event or circumstance in which you react to emotionally, such as the death of a loved one. This type of depression is psychological because you are emotionally “reacting” to something that has happened.""Clinical Depression is more serious, triggered by a chemical imbalance in the brain. This is a biological disorder of the brain, but it has psychological symptoms. This type of depression need not follow any sad, stressful or upsetting event; it can kick in for no apparent reason at all other than a change in one’s brain chemicals."Is this correct or is clinical depression just depression that is more serious and is not specifically due to chemical imbalance? I'm kind of confused about all this.I thought that was right but I'm doing research for school and I keep getting mixed information. Most people say clinical depression in depression which lasts more than a few weeks, but that didn't sound like the proper meaning.

[Natalya]

I think you've answered your own question...!The way I understand it, reactive depression can occur in anyone, not just people with a predisposition towards depression. It is triggered by a trauma; such as a bereavement, the break up of a relationship, being attacked, or any number of things.Reactive depression can still involve chemical changes though, such as less seratonin, brought about by ongoing stress.Clinical depression is ongoing; a person may suffer from this from a very young age and have to take medication all of their life; it's not necessarily triggered by anything but just seems to occur.I may be wrong, in which case I'm sure others will correct me, but that's the way I understand it.

[Jerry Lee]

I think what they mean is that reactive means you got depressed for some outside reason that they consider logical (baby died, riot in neighborhood, etc.)and clinical means they can't figure why you are depressed,and it gets better when they give you medicine (SSRI's, fish oil, etc.)Season is not mentioned, but phototherapy could work too,especially for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

[twistedshower]

Yeah reactive depression as the name suggests is when an outside event or influence causes the depression and clinical depression is usually an imbalance of chemicals in the brain leading to people feeling depressed"for no apparent reason"I don't think any of these are dependent on time factors though as earlier suggested!

[scuba pants!]

Okay, here's the thing. It depends on who you get your information from.But here are the basics, reactive depression is depression that occurs after a traumatic or saddening life experience like after a death in the family.Clinical depression is any depression that lasts longer than 2 weeks. Read the DSM criteria for a major depressive episode aka clinical depression. That means that reactive depression can turn into clinical depression including the chemical imbalance. While there may be something to be said about a genetic link to depression, we don't really know at this point. There is no such thing as strictly genetic/biological depression. All depression is psychological in nature.No one knows if it's the chemical imbalance or the depressive thoughts and behavours that come first. What people do know is that sometimes antidepressant medication works in lifting depressive symptoms. Another thing that is known is that cognitive behavourial therapy has the exact same success rate as antidepressant medication for clinical depression except that CBT does not have the high relapse rate. If you look at brain scans of people before and after CBT, you can see physical changes in the brains. Their brains no longer look depressed and they no longer report depressive symptoms to the same degree. It's interesting that people can know this, but still claim that clinical depression is just a chemical imbalance in the brain like it's some sort of physical brain disorder like epilespy. It's clearly not.