how do adolescents define depression? - cIRcle - University of ...

Chapter II: Literature Review
(Baird et al., 1999). Depressed individuals tend to exhibit social isolation (Kandel & Davies,
1986) and the risk of depression increases in the absence of social support (Brown & Harris,
1978; Kandel & Davies, 1986; Wong & Wiest, 1999). It may be necessary to learn more about
distinctions in emotions to gain insight into interpersonal competence and discern the role of
emotions in the development of depressive symptomatology.
The word "depression" is defined in various ways in the literature. Often, depression is
used interchangeably with the terms that connote emotion (e.g., emotional disorder), mood (e.g.,
mood disorder), or affect (e.g., affective disorder) (Gohm & Clore, 2000). However, it is
frequently a challenge to comprehend what these terms mean, separately or in relation to each
other. Depression is used in other definitions as well (e.g., emotional disturbance, depressed
mood, mood disorder), although it remains unclear what distinctions are being drawn. Vague
definitions connecting emotional understanding to depressive symptomatology, such as the
expression of negative emotion or negative emotionality, are also used in literature, yet the real
meaning of those definitions is difficult to decipher.
Defining Emotions
Webster's dictionary (Random House, 1996) defines emotion as feeling, an affective
state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like are experienced. The
dictionary distinguishes emotion from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness. Chen and
Dornbusch (1998) define emotion as an active, on-going process that is intuitive, motivational,
organizing, and adaptive and occurs in response to internal and external events. Izard and
Schwartz (1986) suggest that the images, symbols, thoughts, and memories associated with
emotional feelings derive from cognitive processes; hence, the cognitive structure where
emotions are housed can be used as a rationale for cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment
of depression.
Clore and Martin in their book Theories of Mood and Cognition (2001) further
differentiate emotion, as well as affect and mood. This paragraph defines their interpretations of
these three terms. Affect refers to the representations of knowledge (cognitions) and the term
affective refers to the representations of value (e.g., goodness) that have positive or negative
personal value. Mood is an affective state without objects of feeling; mood has less salient causes
than emotion and usually lasts longer than emotion (Clore & Martin, 2001). Finally, emotion is
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