Depression is characterized by depressed or sad mood, diminished interest in activities which used to be pleasurable, weight gain or loss, psychomotor agitation or retardation, fatigue, inappropriate guilt, difficulties concentrating, as well as recurrent thoughts of death. But depression is more than a “bad day”; diagnostic criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association dictate that five or more of the above symptoms must be present for a continuous period of at least two weeks.1 As an illness, depression falls within the spectrum of affective disorders