Differential Diagnosis of Depression

Diagnoses in psychiatry have become increasingly based on symptoms rather than causes, so that people with different pathologies receive the same treatment. The worst case of this is the diagnosis of “depression” which is given to what used to be diagnosed as two very different disorders: melancholia (“psychological” depression), which is an extremely emotional state, and neurasthenia (“biological” depression), which is an extremely unemotional state. Melancholia is a mental, neurasthenia a physical weakness.