Hypothymia: what it is, causes, characteristics and treatment

All emotions, both those that we find pleasant and those that we find unpleasant, fulfill an adaptive function. Emotions allow us to adapt to our environment, they move us to action and reveal messages that we must always attend to and manage. Although it may not seem like it, being sad is just as adaptive as being happy.

Sometimes, however, emotions can become pathological and beyond the dimension between pleasant and unpleasant, they cause us intense discomfort. Sadness can acquire an intensity such that it stops being adaptive and becomes harmful to the person who suffers from it, called hypothymia. In the following Psychology-Online article we develop the concept of hypothymia: what is it, causes, symptoms and treatment.

Index

1. What is hypothymia in psychology
2. Causes of hypothymia
3. Symptoms of hypothymia
4. Difference between hypothymia, dysthymia and depression
5. Treatment of hypothymia

The term hypothymia refers to the

Difference between hypothymia and sadness

As we have advanced in the introduction, emotions are necessary for the human being because of their adaptive value. Although sadness turns out to be an unpleasant emotion, it is as important as those that produce pleasant sensations such as joy.

An example of adaptive sadness is found in grieving processes (except, of course, in cases of complicated or pathological grief). In the grieving process, people feel sad and it is this sadness that allows them to adapt to a new context in which there is no longer what they have lost (their family member, their pet, etc.).

When we refer to pathological sadness, emotion no longer fulfills its adaptive function. The emotion causes intense discomfort to the person and interferes with their daily life (in the workplace, education, family, etc.).

The definition of the American Psychiatric Association that we have referred to previously, relates hypothymia with the major depressive disorder, a disorder included in the DSM-5 diagnostic classification^[2] of the same association. However, hypothymia can also appear in other diagnostic pictures such as Bipolar disorder or the schizoaffective disorder, in which major depressive episodes also occur.

The cause for which people feel sad can be very diverse, so the professional should assess the particular case and determine what are the mechanisms that are causing the hypothymia.

However, given the link made by the American Psychiatric Association of hypothymia with the disorder Major depressive disorder, we review below which are the explanatory models in the development of this disorder.

In the first place, biologically, genetic explanations and endocrine problems have been established that explain the appearance of depressive symptoms. The monoaminergic hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that it would be a norepinephrine, serotonin and / or dopamine deficiency which would explain the symptoms.

Second, from psychology explanations have been proposed from different perspectives:

• Psychodynamics.
• Behavioral (focused on aspects such as decreased positive reinforcement).
• Cognitive (which has theories such as learned helplessness theory or Beck's theory).

Hypothymia is, by itself, a symptom that appears and / or can appear in different psychological disorders. In the case of DSM-5 major depressive disorder, depressed mood is precisely one of the two symptoms necessary for its diagnosis and that consists of the experimentation of sadness, feeling of hopelessness, emptiness, irritability in the case of the population infant-juvenile, etc.

Hypothymia is characterized by decreased mood, feeling down, sluggishness, and expressionlessness.

What disorders is hypothymia associated with? This symptom is mainly associated with depressive disorders. While hypothymia is the symptom that describes low mood, both dysthymia and depression are psychological disorders that include other symptoms and that must meet a series of criteria to be diagnosed.

Along with depressed mood, pathological sadness or hypothymia, we can also find the following symptoms:

• Loss of interest or pleasure in all or almost all activities. The inability to feel pleasure is called anhedonia, while the loss of interest is called apathy.
• Weight loss or gain.
• Sleeping problems: insomnia or hypersomnia.
• Psychomotor problems: psychomotor agitation or retardation.
• Fatigue or loss of energy.
• Concentration problems, decision making or difficulty in the ability to think.
• Feeling of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt.
• Recurring thoughts of death or suicidal thoughts.

In case of presenting several of these symptoms, we could be talking about a mood disorder, like the ones we will see below.

Dysthymia is a psychological disorder characterized by a depressed mood, exhibiting several of the above symptoms for at least two years. In the following article you will find What is dysthymia: definition, symptoms and treatment.

On the other hand, we find major depression, another mood disorder exhibiting at least 5 of the above symptoms for at least 2 weeks.

Pathological sadness or hypothymia, as we have already pointed out, is a symptom that usually appears together with other symptoms, forming a psychological disorder. Depending on the context in which it appears, we will have to assess one treatment or another. In this article we are going to review the treatments for depressive disorders following the chapter of Carrobles, J.A. (2014)^[3].

Medical treatment

Regarding the medical or psychiatric treatment of hypothymia, different strategies are used:

• Administration of antidepressant drugs. In this article we explain the Types of antidepressants and what they are for.
• Prescription of mood stabilizers.
• Electroconvulsive therapy. In the following article we talk about what is Electroconvulsive therapy and how it is used.
• Other brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Psychological treatment

On the other hand, regarding the psychological treatment of hypothymia (and other symptoms of a depressive disorder), the cognitive behavioral therapy. The cognitive behavioral therapy It has a series of techniques that can be applied depending on the needs of the case. The evaluation of each case will clarify the causes that are causing the drop in mood and, depending on what these causes are, some techniques or others will be chosen. Among them we can find:

• Behavioral activation or enjoyable activities program. Here we talk about Behavioral techniques for treating depression.
• Problem solving therapy. In this article you will find more information about Troubleshooting techniques.
• Beck's Depression Cognitive Therapy. Here we explain what is and what does Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy consist of?.
• Depression Coping Program (Lewinsohn).

Finally, the interpersonal therapy has shown good evidence in the treatment of depression.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Hypothymia: what it is, causes, characteristics and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

1. American Psychiatric Association (2020). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Recovered from https://dictionary.apa.org
2. American Psychiatric Association (2014). DSM-5. Reference guide to the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5-Breviary. Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana.
3. Carrobles, J.A. (2014) Depressive Disorders. In Caballo, V.E., Salazar, I.C. And Carrobles, J.A. (2014) Manual of Psychopathology and Psychological Disorders. Madrid. Pyramid.