In everyday speech the word ‘illness’ is used loosely. Similarly, in psychiatric practice the term ‘mental illness’ is used with little precision, and often synonymously with ‘mental disorder’. In this context, the terms ‘mental’ and ‘psychiatric’ are also used interchangeably. A good definition of mental illness is difficult to...

  Introduction The next two chapters describe depressive disorders and bipolar disorder. These conditions are also called mood disorders because one of their main features is abnormality of mood. Nowadays the term is usually restricted to disorders in which this mood is depression or elation, but in the past some authors have included states of anxiety as well. In this book, anxiety...

There is no general agreement about the best method of classifying depressive disorders. A number of approaches have been tried, based on the following:● presumed aetiology● symptomatic picture● course.Classification by presumed aetiologyHistorically, depressive disorders were sometimes classified into two kinds—those in which the symptoms were caused by factors within the individual, and...

  Introduction In the previous chapter we considered depressive disorders and we now turn to bipolar disorders, another group of conditions in which depressive episodes are prominent. In bipolar disorder, however, the course is marked by at least one episode of mania or hypomania. Kraepelin (1921) brought mania and depression together as manic depressive psychosis, because he believed...

IntroductionOf all the major psychiatric syndromes, schizophrenia is perhaps the most difficult to define and describe. This partly reflects the fact that, over the past century or more, widely divergent concepts have been held in different countries and by different people. Although there is now a greater consensus, substantialuncertainties remain. Indeed, schizophrenia remains the best...