[Organic illness and depressions (author's transl)]

There exist between depressions and organic disorders both structural and fortuitous relationships. Psychiatrists must know the former and non-psychiatrists must be suspicious of the latter. It is to be noticed that serious and mainly deadly diseases bring about the cure of current depressions and prevent, even in the case of patients showing a predisposition to them, the development of depressions that would still seem to be justified. Non-psychiatrists will often adopt, as regards depression, two opposite attitudes whose consequences may be serious: whether they unduly take the psychiatric approach to treat the organic ailments, or whether they ignore or deny the depressive fact and the therapeutic necessities. This communication will indicate precise cases when this double misunderstanding had had, or might have had tragic consequences.