INVOLUTIONAL MELANCHOLIA

Abstract

Great diversity of opinion exists in the minds of most neuropsychiatrists as to the status that should be accorded involutional melancholia as a clinical entity. As with most types of psychoses, no one has yet demonstrated a single direct or specific cause for this mental illness. Strecker and Ebaugh¹say: Involutional melancholia is probably a subdivision of manic-depressive, but by virtue of its distinctive symptomatology its lengthy course and its association with a definite physiological life epoch (climacteric), it merits separate description. The present state of our knowledge only permits the statement that the climacteric and the widespread changes induced are in some sense causal factors, but as to the exact mechanism there is very little definite information. Henderson and Gillespie²in their textbook attempt to define the condition by giving a description of the signs and symptoms as found in this mental disease, without offering any specific