Mental health professionals and physicians are vigilant and deliberate when examining their clientele for clinical depression. Your practitioner won’t only base his/her diagnosis of you based on the tears you shed, it takes more than that to establish an indication of severe depression or depression in general. A licensed expert must seize the time to collect a competent deal of information with reference to a person prior to determining that he/she is clinically depressed.

Major Depressive Disorder Criteria

Furthermore to a medical evaluation, a clinical interview, and probably further assessments, a professional will evaluate if an person has specific symptoms of a mood disorder like major depression, dysthymia or bipolar disorder. Each mood disorder is characterized by a unique set of symptoms, or diagnostic criteria, which are listed in a publication called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- Fourth Edition, Text Revision.