I have a lot of experience with depression since I have been a chronic suffer of dysthymia since high school. There are different types of depression including dysthymia, major depression, and depression associated with bipolar disorder.

All types of depression have the same symptoms. Some symptoms are physiological symptoms such as the feelings of sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, and listlessness. Other symptoms are biological symptoms such as changes in the sleep/wake cycle such as sleeping too much or occurrences of insomnia. Depression can also effect a person's eating habits causing them to each too much or not enough. These symptoms can vary in severity from person to person. And of course, people with depression can also have thoughts of suicide or may attempt suicide. Rarely, people with depression can have physical pain that has no biological source that can be treated such as "phantom" pain in their arms and legs. This often manifests more often in males than and females.

What makes the types of depression different from one another is severity of the symptoms. Major Depression is where the symptoms are so severe that it keeps the person from functioning at work or school. Dysthymia is a chronic condition where the symptoms are not so bad that they disable the person but it may keep them from enjoying certain aspects of their life. Dysthymia suffers may also suffer some major depression episodes in during their life. The third type of depression is the depression that is associated with bipolar disorder. In bipolar disorder, the person cycles through bouts of mania or emotional highs and bouts of depression or emotional lows.

It is thought that some forms of depression could be inherited since it seems to run in families although a gene for depression has yet to be discovered. It is also thought some forms of depression could be due to biochemical disorders. Women experience depression twice as much as men and of course they also vulnerable to post-partum depression where men are not.

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