Atypical Depression

Definition: Any type of depression can make you feel sad and keep you from enjoying life. However, atypical depression — also called depression with atypical features — means that your depressed mood can brighten in response to positive events. Other key symptoms include increased appetite, sleeping too much, feeling that your arms or legs are heavy, and feeling rejected.

Symptoms: Depression that temporarily lifts in response to good news or positive events, Increased appetite that can cause weight gain, Increased desire to sleep, usually more than 10 hours a day, Heavy, leaden feeling in your arms or legs that lasts an hour or more in a day — a feeling that is different from fatigue, Sensitivity to rejection or criticism, which affects your relationships, social life or job.

Statistics: 18.5% of patients met the criteria for atypical depression. The presence of an atypical depression was significantly correlated with both the atypical score (r=0.42) and the atypical balance (r=0.51). The logistic regression showed that a higher score on the SAS, the absence of a somatic syndrome (ICD-10) and a lower HDRS-21 score were independent predictors of an atypical depression while age, gender and bipolarity were not. The ROC curve showed that an atypical balance of 29% was the optimal threshold for the diagnosis of atypical depression (sensitivity=0.86, specificity=0.79).