An Introductory to Melancholia

“It is warmth. I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.”- George Sand

What is Melancholia?

     Melancholy is often defined as a mental condition that is characterized by great depression of spirits and gloomy forebodings. It also could be defined as a gloomy state of mind, especially when it happens regularly everyday, prolonged. Melancholia is actually not the same as melancholy. Melancholy is a sad thoughtful state of mind, whereas melancholia is more or less the same but often associated with mental symptoms of depression. There's also subtype of clinical depression that is associated with melancholic features, Melancholic Depression. The people that are suffering from melancholic depression has the inability to find pleasure in positive things. Not just positive things, even the things that used to make them happy, they are unable to find the pleasure in doing those things anymore. And also their mood does not improve in response to positive events. Other than that, they could feel at least three of the following: Depression that is subjectively different from grief or loss (which I feel), severe weight loss or loss of appetite, psychomotor agitation or retardation, early morning awakening (which happened to me), guilt that is excessive (which I feel every single day). and worse mood in the morning.

       The first use of the word Melancholia would date back to the 400 B.C., when a Greek Philosopher Hippocrates theorized that the human body contained four major fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. A human grew sick when these fluids were out of balance in their body. An excess of black bile would cause someone to become despondent and fearful. The Greeks call this condition as melancholia. It became the first term used for depression and the first way depression was ever studied.

      During the Renaissance, Europeans considered melancholia to be a sign of creative genius. They glorified melancholia through art, fashion, and written works. But by the 18th century, the term melancholia returned to its clinical roots.

   Around the 19th century, people used the term depression synonymously with melancholia. Sigmund Freud's writings in On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia helped modernize the concept of melancholia to its current definition.

      And now in modern days, the term melancholia is often misunderstood as just feeling sad or sadness, while actually there's a distinct difference between melancholia and sadness. Melancholia is understood as what I have written above as a gloomy state of minds that has no reason for happening, which can indeed lead to a mental illness. Meanwhile, sadness is what we all feel at some point because something happened to us, but it can easily go away.