[Depression in black Africa. Review of the literature]

The first two chapters of the present review of literature about depression in Black Africa deal with epidemiological data and semiological items. The epidemiological approach rises up the same difficulties as those raised in similar researches carried out in Western Countries, and others linked with the sociological field being studied. We find in the clinical descriptions some basic symptoms classically described in the West. Yet, the expression of the depressive experience gives way to cultural persecutive interpretations, the meaning of which is treated in the third chapter.