A Follow Up Study of Schizophrenia and Depression in Young Adults

The differential diagnosis of schizophrenia and depression is clinically important in so far as these diagnoses carry therapeutic and prognostic implications. The Kraepelinian dichotomy was foreshadowed in Griesinger's recognition that “a state of vague, objectless emotion, be it sad or cheerful, and vague general delirium, is always more favourable than the appearance and continuance of fixed ideas … In melancholia, too, the appearance of hallucinations is decidedly unfavourable; those especially which refer the malady to external agencies (to other persons, to witchcraft, etc.) are remarkably persistent, and introduce at a later period a condition of dementia” (Griesinger, 1861). Kraepelin's descriptions of maniacal-depressive conditions and of dementia praecox remain the basis of contemporary systems of classification of the functional psychoses.