[Hans_Olo]

I'm a bit clueless.
Is the absence of pleasure from activities one have previously found to be enjoying required to diagnose depression? Or it can occur without such a symptom?
Thank you in advance.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Hans_Olo: I'm not a psychologist. So I'm not really in a position to answer your question definitively. However, based on my personal experience, I would say that the absence of pleasure is such a key component of depression that it would be difficult to imagine a case where one could be diagnosed as having depression without one's having experienced a loss of pleasure. The link below is to a Psychology Today
article on Anhedonia & Depression.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-and-anhedonia

[gayleggg]

I don't know if it is necessary for a diagnosis but I know with me it's one of the first symptoms I have when depression is starting.

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[Fizzyo]

I don't know if it's a major criteria but I find loss of pleasure can be variable, when my depression has been less severe I have been able to distract myself with something absorbing and experience relative enjoyment, that is nearer to pleasure than usual.

Whatever it means, if you can enjoy something at sometime, cultivate and hold on to the memory, rehearsing it and reliving it at different times, every day as much as you can. This will help your quality of life, whatever your difficulty is. You have a great gift.

Good luck and best wishes

I'm in the US. My understanding of the way depression is diagnosed here is that a person could still be diagnosed with major depression without experiencing severe anhedonia. Different areas of the world use different diagnostic criteria, though, so keep that in mind.

I know that in my own depressive episodes, anhedonia has ranged from mild to severe.

From the "All About Depression" website:

Different people are affected in different ways by major depression. Some people have trouble sleeping, they lose weight, and they generally feel agitated and irritable.

Others may sleep and eat too much and continuously feel worthless and guilty. Still others can function reasonably well at work and put on a "happy face" in front of others, while deep down they feel quite depressed and disinterested in life.

There is no one way that people look and behave when they have major depression. However, most people will either have depressed mood or a general loss of interest in activities they once enjoyed, or a combination of both.

In addition they will have other physical and mental symptoms that may include fatigue, difficulty with concentration and memory, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, headaches, body aches, and thoughts of suicide.

There's also the case of still being depressed while taking antidepressant medication. When I've experienced that, the anhedonia is usually not as severe.

So I'm not 100% sure. I'll just say that it's difficult to imagine a case of depression where someone has dysfunction in their eating, sleeping, feeling, and thinking and it doesn't affect their ability to enjoy things.