[Changes in depressive symptomatology in Austria]

A study of psychopathological manifestations of depressive in-patients, treated in the Salzburg psychiatric clinic in the last ten years, showed a masked shift of symptoms. The shift is away from guilt-feelings as well as away from religious content to a more general moral one. Also noted was a definite increase in feelings on insufficiency and hypochondric ideas. A comparison with tendencies in the Maghreb areas, in which a shift from the masked-somatic symptoms toward guilt-depression is reported, our results show here in Europe a renewed tendency of a shift from guilt-depression to hypochondric or anxiety-depression.