Three potential emotional causes of depressive symptoms – negative emotionality, hyper-emotionality and hypo-emotionality: a preliminary study

© Charlton et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International The broad diagnostic category of DSM Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) was established in 1980 – in practice it seems that MDD can be interpreted as inclusive of patients with a wide range of dysphoric feelings including depression, anxiety, mood swings and emotional blunting/ unemotionality (Watson 1988a, Nutt 2007). In other words, depressive symptoms may be regarded as a consequence of more than one emotional state; rather as pain may be a consequence of many causes (Charlton 2009).