Journal
JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
Volume 200, Issue 6, Pages 480-485Publisher
LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS
DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e318248213f
Keywords
Depression; diagnosis; bereavement; grief; DSM-5; validity; harmful dysfunction
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The DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder exclude bereavement-related depressive episodes that are brief and lack certain severe symptoms and are thus better explained as normal grief responses. However, the DSM-5 Task Force proposes to eliminate this exclusion because of a lack of evidence that such episodes differ relevantly from standard major depression. Using the two-wave longitudinal Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study, we compared 1-yr depression recurrence rates at wave 2 of four groups at wave 1 baseline: (1) those with no history of depressive disorder (n = 18,239), (2) those who had only lifetime excludable bereavement-related depression (n = 25), (3) those with brief-episode (<= 2 months duration) lifetime standard depressive disorder (n = 446), and (4) those with nonbrief lifetime standard depressive disorder (n = 581). The recurrence rate in the excludable-depression group (3.7%) was not significantly different from the no-history group (1.7%) but was significantly and substantially lower than in the brief and nonbrief standard depression groups (14.4% and 16.2%, respectively). These findings confirm findings reported by Mojtabai (Arch Gen Psychiatry 68: 920-928, 2011) using a different data set and time frame and thus substantially strengthen the support for the validity of bereavement exclusion and for its preservation in the DSM-5.
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