Depression and anxiety secondary to medical illness

Abstract

Depression, like pneumonia or septic shock, is a serious complication of major medical illness, requiring adequate nosologic classification for at least five categories of depression: major, minor, adjustment disoregories of depressed mood, organic mood syndrome, and uncomplicated bereavement. Evidence suggests that such major secondary depression is associated with concurrent neurochemical changes consistent with existing hypotheses of primary depression. Anxiety syndromes appear significantly more often in certain medical illnesses affecting the central nervous system. In some cases, neuroanatomic clues suggest the pathophysiology of the primary psychiatric condition.