Classification of depression

Depression is an aetiologically unspecific reaction pattern of the human organism to psychological or physical changes. It can occur in all forms of psychiatric disorders. The depressive symptomatology in itself does not allow a valid classification. Nosology must take into account aetiology, pathogenesis, and the course. The former two are mostly unknown. Considering the restricted value of all classifications of depressive syndromes the concepts must be validated by external criteria (e.g. genetic, biochemical, neurophysiological criteria, and response to treatment). In this paper a classification based on the course and genetic criteria of depression is proposed. In a preliminary study the clinical diagnoses of 100 depressive patients are compared with the classification based on diagnostic criteria of Feighner et al., Taylor and Abrams, as well as on DSM-III.