[The psychopathology of depersonalization depression]

77 patients (29 men, 48 women) at the age of 17-51 years with depersonalisation depression (DD) of nonpsychotic level with duration 6 months and longer. Such depressions were psychopathologically characterized by close connection between affective and depersonalizing components of the syndrome. The depressive component manifested with a mild hypothymia with dissociation between subjective severity and objective self-estimation, vulnerability to provoking factors, inversion of somatic symptoms that permit to evaluate affective disorders as "atypical depression" (according to DSM-IV). Peculiarities of depersonalizing component were relatively low degree of the alienation phenomena and their psychopathic (hysteric) colour. Personal status of the patients before disease's manifestations was characterized by some signs of accentuation of a self-consciousness sphere and corresponded to borderline disorders. The conclusion was made about the existence of a particular type of DD in which symptom complexes, relatively independent (affective and depersonalizing), had a mutual affinity; so they united according to mechanism of pathologic synergism. This type of depression is only one of variants of DD.