The clinical distinction between anxiety and depression.

Anxiety and depression, as normally used, refer to moods, appearing either as a reaction to an appropriate situation or to abnormal states occurring as symptoms in mental illness. The distinction of concern here is that which is made between the syndromes 'anxiety state (anxiety neurosis)' and 'depressive illness (melancholia)'. In these two conditions it has always been accepted that the essential feature is the change of mood and the schools of psychobiology and psychoanalysis have always regarded them as fundamentally similar. Others have always regarded them as quite distinct. This was because depressive illness was considered to be fundamentally constitutional and anxiety state to be a psychogenic reaction.