Linda Huelke-Pfleger, LCPCS, a  Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, asks in EEHealth’s Healthy Driven Blog, “Are you feeling persistently down?”  Maybe you can still function, get out of bed and go about your day, but your gloomy mood keeps you from feeling good. Maybe you’re even a little apathetic about life. Should you be concerned?Many of us think of depression as being marked by overwhelming sadness and an inability to get out of bed or function — something that really interferes with life. There’s also the depression that typically happens in the late fall and winter (seasonal affective disorder) and the well-known “baby blues” (perinatal mood and anxiety disorder).

Fewer people know about a more chronic, low-grade form of depression called persistent depressive disorder (PDD), or dysthymia.

With this form of depression, a person’s mood is regularly low for prolonged periods of time. Dysthymia is characterized by a depressed mood (or irritability in children) for most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two years in adults or at least one year in children and teens.