Using patient samples in London hospitals, the authors compared three
methods of diagnosing and subdividing depressive illness in terms of their
ability to predict outcome. The Catego class D+ selected patients who
continued to suffer from episodes of psychotic depression. The Research
Diagnostic Criteria selected patients with schizoaffective depressions
whose outcome a completely different from that of major depressive
disorder. DSM-III had advantages over the other systems, since it divides
depression into three subtypes that differ from each other and from
schizophrenia. Patients with a DSM-III diagnosis of mood- incongruent
psychotic depression had persistent schizophrenic psychopathology, but
their outcome differed from that of both schizophrenic and manic-depressive
patients.Abstract Teaser