Mood Disorders
A Handbook of Science and Practice
Chapter One
THE CLASSIFICATION AND EPIDEMIOLOGY
OF UNIPOLAR DEPRESSION
Paul Bebbington
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I will deal with the difficult problem of classifying a disorder that looks
more like the expression of a continuum than a useful category. The way affective symptoms
are distributed in the general population calls into serious question the utility of a medical
classification, and certainly makes procedures of case definition and case finding very
difficult. Nevertheless, researchers do rely on these procedures to establish the epidemiology
of the disorder, and in the second part of the chapter I will pull togeth ... read full excerpt from Mood Disorders: A Handbook of Science and Practice ebook
