Depression is one of the most common psychiatric diseases that can be encountered in clinical practice, and there has been much debate over its classification. In particular, a great number of studies about the biological markers of depression up
to
date suggested psychotic depression is a separate disease entity. So. The aim of this study is to see what meanings the results of some tests have in regard to the biological diagnosis and classification of the depression.
The 14 psychotically depressed patients and 14 non-psychotically depressed patients from 20 to 57 years of age were given DST. Brain. CT, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression(HRSD). And Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale(BPRS). The authors compared
the
results of the tests and analyzed the correlation among them.
The psychotically depressed patient group marked significantly high scores on DST(P<0.05), VR(ventricular-brain ratio)(P<0.05), BPRS(P<0.001) compared to the non-psychotically depressed patients. And there were some items in HRSD & BPRS that have
significantly different scores between two groups, but there was no significant correlation among DST, Brain CT, clinical symptom scales.
These finings suggest that the psychotic depression is different from the non-psychotic depression biologically and is a separate disease entity. But, no correlation among the results of the tests suggest that they are not correlated in the
pathophysiology of depression.
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