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 It is concluded that the heterogeneous ICD-9 diagnosis of neurotic depression seems in DSM-III to have been replaced by an equal heterogeneous diagnosis major depression.