Reactive and endogenous depressive illness and five-year outcome.

Data on severe life events and major difficulties, collected by the Bedford College method from a consecutive series of 71 in-patients, diagnosed as suffering from depression using the Present State Examination, was used in order to divide the sample into those having endogenous and reactive illnesses. There was no distinctive clinical picture associated with either diagnosis and there were no important differences on any of the measures of outcome obtained from a postal and case note follow-up 5 years later. A similar comparison of reactive depressive psychosis and non-reactive depressive psychosis likewise produced no outstanding differences in clinical picture nor outcome.