IN THIS ISSUE

2005 Psychological Medicine  
This issue features groups of papers dealing with nosology of depression and psychoses, biology of depression, structural brain MRI in schizophrenia and autism, together with papers on other topics. Nosology of depression In the lead Invited Review, Parker (pp. 467-474) reviews the DSM concept of major depression, criticizes its value, and argues that the time has come to move beyond it. report an empirical study of DSM-III-R major depression criteria, using latent trait item-response methods.
more » ... hey find a reasonably coherent unidimensional scale of liability, but with some deficiencies, and find quantitative item-response scales superior in predicting relevant outcomes and estimating twin model parameters. Slade & Andrews (pp. 489-497), studying latent structure of depression in the community, also argue for a quantitative approach, and conclude that depression in this context is best regarded as a continuously distributed syndrome rather than a discrete diagnostic entity. Murray et al. (pp. 499-510) report a classificatory study of schizophrenia and affective psychoses. Using two different approaches, one dimensional employing factor analysis, and one a categorical latent class analysis, they obtained very similar findings, with four dimensions or groups, corresponding to reality distortion, disorganization, depression, and mania.
doi:10.1017/s0033291705004642 fatcat:2knckqigebamxkw7b6hlwhhozi