Neurotic depression and DSM-III.

The background for the removing of the concept of neurosis from the American diagnosing system is discussed. Results are presented showing how cases diagnosed as neurotic depression according to ICD-9, are distributed on various DSM-III diagnoses. It appears that half of the sample is diagnosed as major depression, one-fifth as dysthymic disorder and one-fifth as depressive adjustment disorder. Concerning the delineation between different unipolar depressive diagnoses in DSM-III, results from a twin study are presented showing that many cotwins have a different depressive diagnosis than their index twin partner. It is concluded that the heterogeneous ICD-9 diagnosis of neurotic depression seems in DSM-III to have been replaced by an equal heterogeneous diagnosis major depression.