Depression qualifies as severe depression, when it causes intense feelings of sadness, emptiness and hopelessness that disrupts a person's ability to handle daily activities, work and relationships.
Key signs and symptoms of severe depression are profound sadness, loss of interest, exhaustion, cognitive struggles and suicidal thoughts.
Profound sadness, includes having a deep, unshakable feeling of despair, misery, or emotional numbness.
Loss of interest, is where the person has a complete lack of pleasure in hobbies, social events or normal daily tasks.
Exhaustion is when the person has severe physical fatigue, in which basic actions like getting out of bed feel impossible.
Cognitive struggles, are where the person has trouble concentrating, remembering details or making simple decisions.
And suicidal thoughts are where the person has frequent or recurrent thoughts of death or self harm.
And unlike mild depression or moderate depression, the severe form of depression features a high number of intense symptoms that persist nearly all day, every day, for weeks, months or longer and it completely overwhelms a person's coping capacity and functional independence.
Severe depression also requires professional medical care, which often combines psychotherapy (talk therapy), medication, or other medical interventions.
The deadliest depression is Major depressive disorder, also known as clinical depression as well as it's severe subtype, psychotic depression, due to the high risks of severe impairment, self harm and suicide.
Major Depressive Disorder also known as clinical depression is a severe mental health condition that causes persistent sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest in daily life, which lasts 2 weeks or longer.
Major Depressive Disorder significantly impairs your ability to function and carries a high risk of recurring, intense suicidal thoughts.
Psychotic Depression is a subtype of major depression, in which a person experiences psychosis symptoms like hallucinations or delusions.
The reason psychotic depression is dangerous is because the delusions or hallucinations are often mood congruent, like hearing voices telling the person they are worthless or being punished, which drastically increases the risk of dangerous self harm or even suicide attempts.
The deepest form of depression is severe major depression that is accompanied by suicidal ideation, self harm, or even psychotic features, where your daily functioning also becomes completely debilitating.
Severe major depression is the worst stage of depression.
And while clinical depression is often viewed through levels of severity, which include (mild, moderate and severe) or progressive worsening phases rather than fixed "stages" of depression, the most dangerous and intense point of depression is marked by extreme functional impairment and crisis.
The key signs of severe depression include complete debilitation, severe emotional numbness or agony and crisis symptoms.
Complete debilitation in severe depression are where basic daily tasks, like showering, getting out of bed, eating or even working feel physically and even mentally impossible.
Severe emotional numbness or agony in severe depression involve intense feelings of worthlessness, crushing guilt and profound hopelessness taking over.
And crisis symptoms of severe depression involve emergence of thoughts of death, suicide, self harm, or in rare cases, psychotic features such as catatonia or delusions.
The common signs of severe depression are physical pain, severe isolation, extreme hopelessness, total loss of function and suicidal thoughts.
Suicidal thoughts include believing there is no escape from the agony, or that loved ones would be better off without you.
Total loss of function includes being unable to get out of bed, eat, bathe or do basic daily tasks.
Extreme hopelessness includes feeling completely empty, numb or convinced that life will never get better.
Severe isolation includes pulling away from all friends, family and support systems.
And physical pain includes experiencing any unexplained aches, severe fatigue, or extreme sleep and weight changes.