MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does major depressive episode mean? 

• MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE (noun)
  The noun MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE has 1 sense:

1. (psychiatry) a state of depression with all the classic symptoms (anhedonia and lethargy and sleep disturbance and despondency and morbid thoughts and feelings of worthlessness and sometimes attempted suicide) but with no known organic dysfunction

  Familiarity information: MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MAJOR DEPRESSIVE EPISODE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(psychiatry) a state of depression with all the classic symptoms (anhedonia and lethargy and sleep disturbance and despondency and morbid thoughts and feelings of worthlessness and sometimes attempted suicide) but with no known organic dysfunction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("major depressive episode" is a kind of...):

clinical depression; depression; depressive disorder (a state of depression and anhedonia so severe as to require clinical intervention)

Domain category:

psychiatry; psychological medicine; psychopathology (the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "major depressive episode"):

involutional depression (a major depressive episode associated with the climacteric)

unipolar depression (a major depressive episode that occurs without the manic phase that occurs in the classic form of bipolar disorder)

 Context examples 

A major affective disorder marked by severe mood swings (manic or major depressive episodes) and a tendency to remission and recurrence.

(Bipolar Disorder, NCI Thesaurus)