Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:17:03.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Psychotic and Neurotic Depression: 1. Some Points of Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Máire Ní Bhrolcháin*
Affiliation:
Centre for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London W.C.1

Summary

Testing hypotheses on classification could be made more precise by using only clinical symptoms and signs as its basis. Analyses based on a mixture of clinical, aetiological and background variables give ambiguous results since they incorporate the assumption that aetiological and symptomatological patterns are related in a one-to-one manner. A set of simplified models of possible relationships between aetiology and symptomatology is used to discuss these problems of interpretation. The clinical variables to be used for discriminant analyses may be chosen by testing for the existence of lower-order and higher-order differences between groups.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bedford, A. & Foulds, G. A. (1975) Humpty Dumpty and psychiatric diagnosis. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 28, 208–11.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, M. D. (1971) Heterogeneity and research on depressive disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 24, 524–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., Ní Bhrolcháin, M. & Harris, T. O. (1977) Psychotic and neurotic depression: 3. Aetiological and background factors (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Carney, M. W., Roth, M. & Garside, R. F. (1965) The diagnosis of depressive syndromes and the prediction of ECT response. British Journal of Psychiatry, 111, 659–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derogatis, L. R., Klerman, G. L. & Lipman, R. S. (1972) Anxiety states and depressive neuroses. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 155, 392403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foulds, G. A. (1962) A quantification of diagnostic differentiae. Journal of Mental Science, 108, 389405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foulds, G. A. (1965) Personality and Personal Illness. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Gurney, C., Roth, M., Garside, R. F., Kerr, T. A. & Shapira, K. (1972) Studies in the classification of affective disorders: the relationship between anxiety states and depressive illnesses—II. British Journal of Psychiatry, 121, 162–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, M. & White, J. M. (1959) Clinical syndromes in depressive states. Journal of Mental Science, 105, 985–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jardine, N. & Sibson, R. (1971) Mathematical Taxonomy. London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kay, D. W., Garside, R. F., Beamish, P. & Roy, J. R. (1969) Endogenous and neurotic syndromes of depression: a factor analytic study of 104 cases. Clinical features. British Journal of Psychiatry, 115, 377–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendell, R. E. (1968) The Classification of Depressive Illnesses. Maudsley Monograph No. 18. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kendell, R. E. (1970) The problem of classification. Recent Developments in Affective Disorders, Special Publication No. 2, 1526.Google Scholar
Kendell, R. E. (1976) The classification of depressions: a review of contemporary confusion. British Journal of Psychiatry, 129, 1528.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ní Bhrolcháin, M., Brown, G. W. & Harris, T. O. (1978) Psychotic and neurotic depression: 2. Clinical characteristics. British Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 94107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, S. H. & Klerman, G. L. (1966) Content and consistency in the endogenous depressive pattern. British Journal of Psychiatry, 112, 471–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, S. H. & Gudeman, J. E. (1967a) The endogenous depressive pattern. Archives of General Psychiatry, 16, 241–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenthal, S. H. & Gudeman, J. E. (1967b) The self-pitying constellation in depression. British Journal of Psychiatry, 113, 485–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roth, M., Gurney, C., Garside, R. F. & Kerr, R. A. (1972) The relationship between anxiety states and depressive illnesses—I. British Journal of Psychiatry, 121, 147–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sneath, P. H. A. & Sokal, R. R. (1973) Numerical Taxonomy. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.