About This Condition
Depression refers to a group of mood disorders characterized by persistent low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, and associated emotional, cognitive, and physical symptoms that impair daily functioning. Episodes can range from mild, situationally triggered symptoms to severe, recurrent major depressive episodes with prominent neurovegetative changes and suicidality.
Patients commonly describe feeling sad, empty, hopeless, or “numb,” with diminished ability to experience pleasure, reduced motivation, and withdrawal from usual activities and relationships. Sleep disturbance, appetite and weight changes, fatigue, slowed thinking or agitation, difficulty concentrating, and feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt are frequent. Some individuals present primarily with somatic complaints such as pain, headaches, or gastrointestinal symptoms rather than clearly articulated low mood.
Depression often coexists with anxiety disorders, trauma-related conditions, substance use, and medical illnesses, and it is associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and reduced quality of life. Diagnosis is based on clinical assessment and symptom duration and severity, with careful evaluation for bipolar spectrum disorders, psychotic features, and medical or substance-related contributors that can mimic or exacerbate depressive symptoms.
Common Symptoms
- •Persistent low mood, sadness, emptiness, or irritability
- •Marked loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were previously enjoyable
- •Fatigue, low energy, or feeling “slowed down” much of the time
- •Sleep disturbance, including difficulty falling asleep, early morning awakening, or oversleeping
- •Changes in appetite or weight, either increased or decreased
- •Difficulty concentrating, indecisiveness, or slowed thinking
- •Feelings of worthlessness, excessive guilt, or pervasive negative self-evaluation
- •Recurrent thoughts of death, passive wishes not to wake up, or suicidal ideation
Our Functional Medicine Approach
Mood is a whole-body problem, not just a brain problem
Standard treatment for low mood usually starts — and often ends — with antidepressants or talk therapy. Both have a place. But persistent depression is regularly driven by physiology no one has investigated: thyroid dysfunction, anemia, low B12 / folate / vitamin D, neuroinflammation, gut-brain dysregulation, sex hormone shifts, sleep apnea, or chronic infections. Treating mood without ruling those out leaves the engine running.
Spire is not a replacement for psychiatric care — we work alongside your therapist or prescriber. Our job is to find and treat the physiological contributors so the rest of the work has a better chance of holding.
How Spire works the root cause
Our Unexplained Symptoms Program is the structured entry point. We run a comprehensive lab panel — thyroid (with antibodies and reverse T3), iron / B vitamins / vitamin D, inflammatory markers, sex hormones, and methylation cofactors — plus targeted screens for sleep apnea or chronic infection when the history fits. From there we treat the specific imbalances in your data.
Who this is for
Adults whose low mood hasn't responded to standard care, patients tapering medications and wanting structured support, postpartum and perimenopausal women whose mood shifted with hormonal change, and anyone who wants their physiology investigated before adding more medication.