F32 vs F34

Both involve sustained low mood, and dysthymia can be mistaken for a very long-lasting mild depressive episode, or a depressive episode can be mistaken for an acute worsening within a chronic dysthymic pattern.

• F32 requires a discrete episode meeting the fuller core-plus-additional depressive symptom criteria, typically over about two or more weeks.
• F34 (dysthymia) requires a chronic, years-long pattern that has never, at any point, reached a depressive episode's own severity threshold.
• A person whose chronic low-grade pattern briefly worsens to full depressive-episode severity should be considered for a depressive episode classification at that point, not simply an intensified dysthymia.

What weakens F32: Evidence that symptoms have persisted for years without ever reaching full-episode severity weakens F32 and favours F34; evidence that severity has, even briefly, reached full-episode threshold weakens a pure F34 classification.

F32 is a discrete episode of about two weeks or more; F34 is a chronic pattern of at least about two years, defined precisely by never reaching episode-level severity.

Duration alone does not decide this boundary — a two-week presentation clearly meeting full severity is F32 even if it turns out to recur; a years-long presentation that never reaches full severity is F34 even though it is chronic.

Total duration of the pattern, and whether it has ever, at any point, reached the fuller depressive-episode symptom and severity threshold.

Assuming that because a mood problem has lasted a long time, it must be graded as more severe, or assuming that mild severity alone (regardless of duration) means dysthymia.