What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a state of enhanced sensitivity to threat. Unlike fear, which is focused on a specific threat or threats and subsides when this are dealt with, anxiety is characterised by a constant search for sources of threats and high and persistent Autonomic Arousal. Source: Dictionary of Transactional Analysis by Tony Tilney)

What is depression?

Depression is a transient mood or chronic feeling state characterised by hopelessness, despair, sadness, a sense of meaninglessness, low self esteem and apathy. Psychiatrists distinguish between reactive depression, which has an identifiable external cause such as loss, and endogenous depression where no such cause is identifiable and which seem to arise from internal sources. In depression people are often passive and inactive. Agitated depression is characterised by restlessness and since the sufferer has more energy the risk of self harm is higher. (Source: Dictionary of Transactional Analysis by Tony Tilney)