The Prognosis of Affective Disorders: the Differentiation of Anxiety States from Depressive Illnesses

That a distinction may be made on clinical grounds between anxiety states and depressive illnesses has been affirmed by some authors (Garmany, 1956, 1958; Stenbäck, 1963), and rejected by others (Mapother, 1926; Conrad, 1958; Ey, 1963; Lewis, 1950–1966). This problem is also of interest from a biological point of view in that anxiety neuroses represent in an exaggerated form an emotion that is ‘directly serviceable’ (Cannon, 1928) and one which has potential survival value for the organism. Moreover, analogous conditions can be reproduced experimentally in animals, while no convincing models have so far been described of states akin to depressive illnesses (McKinney and Bunney, 1969).