Does depression need redefined?
Sep 8, 2015
1 min read
As researchers continue to study depression and it's affects on the body, the definition for depression is changing. Read more about it in Why Depression needs a new definition by Jenny Chen of The Atlantic.
In his Aphorisms, Hippocrates defined melancholia, an early understanding of depression, as a state of “fears and despondencies, if they last a long time.” It was caused, he believed, by an excess of bile in the body (the word “melancholia” is ancient Greek for “black bile”).
Ever since then, doctors have struggled to create a more precise and accurate definition of the illness that still isn’t well understood.
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