DELUSION AND DEPRESSION

The present article endeavours an outline of depressive delusions, the ir symptomatology and their various topics. Their relations to depress ive feelings of guilt and anxiety are discussed and defferentiated. De lusions of guilt, poverty or disease including their preliminary state s are by no means rare but regularly occuring symptoms which substanti ate the diagnosis of major depressive disorder/endogenous depression/m elancholia. Preliminary states like hypochondriatic fears of guilt and poverty are likewise characteristic clinical signs which may be diffe rentiated with high validity from the kind of anxiety associated to ne urotic depression/dysthmia. Delusional depression did not prove to be a nosological entity but as a concept may bear considerable heuristic value concerning therapeutic considerations. This particularly serious form of depression requires specific therapeutic procedures.