Clinical forms of depression in African and Spanish cultural communities. A new comparative study

Using the Hamilton rating scale of depression as an instrument of measure, the authors compare the relative frequency of paranoid and hypochondriac depression among 100 Spanish inpatients of the psychiatric service of "Hospital San Carlos" in Madrid (Spain) and among 100 Senegalese patients treated in the social psychiatric service of the Medical Center of Pikine. They find a definite predominancy of hypochondriac and paranoid depression in Senegalese sample. To explain their findings, they make suppositions: the use of the body as means of expression, more important among the Africans, is related to the tendency to somatize; the belief in aggression as a cause of mental illness would be the basis on which the paranoid depression develops.