Time matters: considerations about the time experience in mood disorders

The World Health Organization ranks Mood Disorders as a major source of disability, morbidity, and mortality worldwide. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD) represent the most relevant mood disorders, characterized by recurring episodes of severely and/or prolonged altered mood, behavioural abnormalities, insomnia, changes in appetite, cognitive alterations and increased suicidality. In phenomenological psychopathology, the altered time perception appears to be a core phenomenon in mood disorders. Although the conceptualization of lived time dates back to a hundred years ago, its relevance in psychiatry is perceivable still today and the recent arrival of artificial intelligence could set the basis for a fruitful dialogue between past and present.