What is depression called in traditional Chinese medicine?

Depression is a relatively common mental illness. This disease has an extremely serious impact on the patient's life. It can cause serious emotional disorders in patients and make them pessimistic about life. Severe patients may have suicidal tendencies. Therefore, depression is a disease that modern people are very concerned about. What is the Chinese medicine name for depression? Let’s take a look at the explanation below.

There have been treatments and introductions to depression in ancient China. Depression is a mental illness that spans the world and the ages. Both Chinese and Western medicine have their own treatment methods and principles, but Western medicine starts from the word "suppression" of depression and mostly treats it from a neurological perspective.

In ancient times, from ancient medical books, we can see that the so-called depression, the word "Yu" has three meanings: one refers to the state of depression, the second refers to the poor circulation of essence, qi and blood in the patient's body, or the pathological deficiency, the third refers to the inability to express the seven emotions and six desires, causing emotional disorders and triggering depression-related diseases. Generally, modern treatment is mainly based on the above three points as the treatment principles, and the above are also the three different stages of the development of the depression theory.

The theory of depression includes many aspects, including depression caused by organ dysfunction, emotional imbalance, invasion of pathogens, side effects of drugs and other factors. The organ blockage is believed to be liver depression. The liver is a hard organ, and is the place where qi and blood of the five internal organs are nourished. In the five elements, it belongs to wood. Therefore, the liver likes to express and be unobstructed, and hates depression. If you are depressed, your liver will hurt and your mood will be blocked. The five internal organs complement each other. If one is damaged, all will be damaged, and if one is prosperous, all will prosper, which will bring many symptoms of depression to the body. The main manifestations of depression are depressed mood, restlessness, swelling and pain in both sides of the ribs, or irritability and crying, as well as various complex symptoms such as foreign body obstruction in the throat, insomnia, etc.

Depression is not only caused by liver depression and bad mood. Liver depression can also cause qi stagnation, phlegm stagnation, blood stagnation, damp-heat stagnation, food stagnation and other diseases. Among them, qi stagnation is the first, and qi blockage leads to blood blockage, which then leads to the latter few. Over a long period of time, multiple related diseases will develop. The long-term development of depression will cause symptoms such as phlegm and dampness, food accumulation and abdominal distension. It may also develop into a transition from excess to deficiency, including weak heart and spleen, restlessness, yin deficiency and hyperactivity of fire, etc. Therefore, patients with depression should not delay and should receive timely treatment.