Passage 4
Questions16 to 20 are based on the following passage.
Some estimates are that as many as 8% of adolescents suffer from depression atsome time during any one-year period, making it much more common than, forexample, eating disorders, which seem to get more attention as a source ofadolescent misery.
Evenamong psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals, the extent ofthe disability caused by depression is vastly underestimated. The World HealthOrganization has found that major depression is the single greatest cause ofdisability in the world—more than twice as many people are disabled by depression as by thesecond leading cause of disability，iron-deficiency anemia (贫血症).Other diseases and disorders may get more press coverage or moreresearch money, or more sympathy and concern from a well-meaning public, butmajor depression causes more long term human misery than any other singledisease.
When I was a resident in psychiatry，we believed that true depression was rare amongteenagers, or that insofar as it existed, it was just a normal phase ofadolescent development with no lasting consequences. It didn’t take long afterI began treating troubled kids to see that this couldn't possibly be true.Research over recent decades has confirmed my impression. These beliefs, if anystill holds them, are false and dangerous. In fact, early onset of depressionis not normal, and can predict numerous unhappy life events for youngsters,including school failure, teenage pregnancy, and suicide attempts.
Although depression is increasingly common today, it is among theoldest diseases recorded in the history of medicine. As early as the fourthcentury, the symptoms of “melancholia” were well known. In other words，depression was first thought of as an exclusivelyphysical illness-the loss of appetite， sleeplessness，irritability，and general depression was believed to have a physical，not a psychological cause. Itwasn’t until the nineteenth century-when the term depression was invented tosubstitute for melancholia-that a psychological understanding of the illnessbegan to develop. Eventually this psychological explanation of depression wouldbecome the only one, although today it no longer is. We now know thatdepression has both psychological and physical symptoms, and that bothpsychological and medical treatments can help to alleviate them.
In the 4th century, depression was regarded as a_____.
A、physical disorder
B、psychological problem
C、psychological disease caused by physical disorders
D、physical disease induced by psychological disorders
【正确答案】：A