[Clinical and diagnostic aspects of depressed patients in the non-psychiatric sector of a general hospital].

This paper reports a comparative study of medical depressed inpatients. A total of 100 medical depressed cases were screened and compared with those of a control sample of 100 depressed inpatients in a psychiatric unit. Diagnostic information was obtained from records. Comparisons on a number of demographic variables show no difference on age, sex, socioeconomic class and marital status. The most striking differences between psychiatric depression and medical depression were on the clinical features, having the medical sample more anxious and hypochondriachal types and less delusional and retarded cases. Medical depressives patients were less prone to report suicidal feelings. Recognition of the depressive syndromes by the staff of the medical wards was poor. Somatic symptoms form a prominent part of the symptomatology of the medical depression.