This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Amos Welner, MD
Washington University School of Medicine St Louis, MO 63110

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1980;37(1):111.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

The statements in the second paragraph of Dr Pitts' letter to the editor require clarification. First, since most patients with affective disorder have an episodic course of illness, a history of a cluster of depressive symptoms for a given period of time is the basis for a diagnosis of primary affective disorder in the absence of a preexisting psychiatric disorder. Second, the term "primary affective disorder" is preferable to "manic-depressive psychosis"¹ since the presence of neither psychosis nor mania (or even depression if mania is present) is required for the establishment of the presence of an affective disorder, the cause of which is unknown.² Third, there are no laboratory tests to confirm a diagnosis of primary affective disorder as there are for tuberculosis, where clinical findings can be supported or confirmed by such tests. Fourth, we found the prevalence of primary affective disorder among the female physicians to . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?