2922 – Mood Disorders in ICD-11 and DSM-5: A Brief Overview

Abstract

Clinical reality presents us with a series of continua in the area of mood disorders: between “normal” sadness and depression, between “normal” elation and hypomania, between a “pure” depressive episode and a “pure” manic episode, between unipolar depression and bipolar disorder, between anxiety disorders and depression, and between mood disorders and psychotic disorders. Most of our classificatory efforts and controversies in this area center around how to deal with these continua, where to fix boundaries and how to delineate intermediate or mixed conditions. in this presentation, I briefly review how the ICD-11 and DSM-5 are going to handle these continua. The two systems will address the continua between “normal” elation and hypomania, between unipolar depression and bipolar disorder, and between anxiety disorders and depression in a more consistent way than in the past, while there will be differences in the characterization of mixed states and schizoaffective disorders. A major weakness of both systems will be the fact that the boundary between “normal” sadness and depression will not be based on a solid empirical evidence.