Involutional Melancholia - Literature Review

Literature Review

Emil Kraepelin (1907) was the first to describe involutional melancholia as a distinct clinical entity separate from the manic-depressive psychosis, arguing that 'the processes of involution in the body are suited to engender mournful or anxious moodiness'. Right up until 'the seventh edition of his textbook Kraepelin considered involutional melancholia as a separate disease', of acquired origin, but (partly in response to Dreyfus) 'he decided to include it in the eighth edition under the general heading of manic depressive insanity'.

Dreyfus (1907) had challenged Kraepelin's concept of an acquired origin, maintaining it to be endogenous in origin - although 'a recent statistical study of Dreyfus's old series has also shown that his conclusion that the natural history of involutional melancholia was no different from that of depression affecting younger subjects was wrong'. Kirby (1909) described it as a distinctive syndrome, as did Hoch and MacCurdy in 1922. Titley (1936) described the premorbid personality and narrow range of interests, etc., Kallman (1959) found incidence of schizophrenia in the families of such patients.

Debate about causation - endogenous or environmental - as well as clinical entity continued into the late twentieth century. Some contend that whereas 'involutional melancholy was conceptualized as an acquired rather than constitutional disorder, these ideas have not survived careful scrutiny'. R. P. Brown in 1984 maintained that 'there is insufficient evidence to view involutional melancholy as a separate clinical entity', but at the same time that 'clinical characteristics of patients with unipolar endogenous depression may be influenced by age'.