[Delusion in depression]

The present article endeavours an outline of depressive delusions, their symptomatology and their various topics. Their relations to depressive feelings of guilt and anxiety are discussed and differentiated. Delusions of guilt, poverty or disease including their preliminary states are by no means rare but regularly occurring symptoms which substantiate the diagnosis of major depressive disorder/endogenous depression/melancholia. Preliminary states like hypochondriatic fears of guilt and poverty are likewise characteristic clinical signs which may be differentiated with high validity from the kind of anxiety associated to neurotic depression/dysthmia. Delusional depression did not prove to be a nosological entity but as a concept may bear considerable heuristic value concerning therapeutic considerations. This particularly serious form of depression requires specific therapeutic procedures.