Psychotic and neurotic depression. Part 3. Aetiological and background factors.

Patients receiving diagnoses of 'psychotic' and 'neurotic' depression do not differ significantly in their pre-morbid experience of life events and difficulties of aetiological significance. Some aetiological differences emerge when the two groups are subdivided into their more and less extreme halves along a distribution of discriminant function scores, but these differences are not substantial. Reallocation of the extreme 20% of each diagnostic group (who are likely misclassifications) into the other group tends to enlarge these 'aetiological' differences but they are still slight. Comparison of 'endogenous' patients (those without severe life events or major difficulties) with 'reactive' patients reveals a slight tendency for the 'endogenous' group to have a higher frequency of psychotic-type symptoms. Apart from age and experience of 'past loss', no further significant differences were found in the background characteristics of depressed patients diagnosed as 'psychotic' and those diagnosed 'neurotic'.