Supporters of melancholia as a distinct entity will find little comfort in the recent literature, concludes a new review of the evidence by Sydney researchers.
“The strands of the argument for melancholia are in a melancholy state,” said the study authors led by Mr Dusan Hadzi-Pavlovic from the School of Psychiatry at UNSW and the Black Dog Institute.
“The biology is unclear; the treatment response not as differentiated as it should be; and the humps in the statistical data, once expected to outline melancholia, are for many no more convincing than those spotted in the waters of Loch Ness,” they wrote in Current Opinion in Psychiatry.
They argue there is no evidence to support the idea proposed by supporters of melancholia that...
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