PSYC18H3 Chapter 13: Chapter 13. Emotions and Mental Health in Adulthood
Document Summary
Depression (or affective disorder) is intense sadness; a despair that can painfully persecute and drain all meaning from life. Principal emotional component is the diminution of pleasurable goal achievement. Anxiety involves overwhelming fears together with more protracted moods of disabling anxiety, often avoidance of what is most feared, and often a loss of personal confidence. In an emotional disorder, aspects of one"s emotions tend to become more difficult to understand than normal. Psychiatric epidemiology was slow to take its place alongside medical epidemiology mainly because it was at first difficult to agree on the criteria for diagnosis of the disorders, and reliable psychological assessments have not been developed. Although there are gender differences in normal emotions, they are small in comparison to those in the prevalence of disorders. Women are much more likely than men to suffer from depression and anxiety. Men has a higher prevalence of antisocial personality disorder than women.
