Right out of the gate, I have a problem with this article.
How do we know it's a mood disorder rather than, say, something's made someone miserable? Is there a set of criteria to distinguish "mood disorder" from other things that leave a person feeling sad? There should be. Because there's nothing "disordered" about feeling sad if your dog died or you lost a great job or your house burned down; indeed would you not have some sort of disorder if such things did not depress you?
And what if your wife of fifty years died, and you're still sad a year later...or five years...ten? At what point do you have a disorder?
How do we determine when it's a disorder and when it's the only rational response to whatever befalls a person?
I ask because practitioners of medical science employ the term, not philosophers; so it must be a real phenomenon with a set of objective, measurable characteristics...
” leave a person feeling sad? “
Affect is only one of many aspects of clinical depression and many cases have nothing to do with life events at all.
a mood disorder is an exaggerated and not realistic thinking and behaviors.
Yes there are criteria to distinguish a mood disorder from normative responses to the stresses of their environment that cause for example grief.
A disordered mode of thinking which exhibits racing negative thoughts and an unrealistic negative perception of self, situation or others is just one example. Mood is on a continuum and there are points where the thinking becomes disordered.