if a patient suffering with depression feel sadness and then feel no emotion nor sadness or any emot

Hi duraiz,

You may be asking your question on the wrong forum. The Depression site on the HealthCentral Network may be better placed to answer this and other questions relating to your former symptoms.

You seem to be suggesting that the point in your life where emotions felt flat occured after you were depressed. My suggestion to you is that you were most likely still depressed but that your symptoms were not as strong as they had previously been. Emotional flatness, or apathy, is a common feature of depression and is usually accompanied by cognitive symptoms that include loss of interest and motivation, pessimism and negative thinking.

Depression is a process that varies from person to person. Some people slip into it slowly and recover relatively quickly. Some people describe being hit by a freight train from which they never properly recover.

As a student of psychology you may be interested in the professional body (APA). Their website has a link to the topic of depression. My own professional organisation (the British Psychological Society) has a nice PDF called Digging Deep into Depression which is free to read/download.

There are also several very good academic books on the subject which you will find in your University library. If you want to spend out on a book that discusses these issues from an academic perspective and is not too expensive you might want to consider Constance Hammen's book called 'Depression' published by Psychology Press. There are however many other texts that are just as worthy and possibly more so.