Depression: The Distinction between Syndrome and Symptom

Abstract

Few psychiatric controversies have been as persistent as the disagreement surrounding the nosology of depression. The conflict centres on the question of whether depression is a single illness, with its many faces manifestations of individual idiosyncrasy and severity, or whether it constitutes two or more separate conditions. The 1926 debate at the British Medical Association Meetings, with Edward Mapother (11) propounding the case for a single illness and Buzzard and Ross advancing claims for a dichotomy, has in one form or the other continued until today. The issue is complicated by the fact that few terms in psychiatry are used with as many different meanings as depression. Unfortunately the use of the term is seldom clearly defined. As Humpty Dumpty said in Through the Looking-Glass, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.

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