Can drug-induced depressions be identified by their clinical features?

Drug-induced depression is classified by the DSM-III-R as an organic mood syndrome of the depressed type. Because drugs have specific pharmacological effects and mechanisms of action, depressive syndromes induced by specific drugs may have characteristic clinical features. An awareness of such features would be valuable for clinical purposes. This review is an attempt to summarize the information on clinical features of drug-induced depressions. The review determined that no unique clinical features have been identified for depressive syndromes associated with most drugs. However, the literature did suggest that depressions associated with oral contraceptive agents may differ significantly from non organic major depressive episodes.