정신병적 우울증과 비정신병적 우울증에 있어서 덱사메타손 억제검사，뇌전산화 단층촬영 및 임상증상의 비교

The Comparisons of Dexamethasone Suppression Test, Brain Computerized Tomography, and Clinical Symptomatology in Psychotic and Non-psychotic Depression

Depression is one of the most common psychiatric diseases that can be encountered in clinical practice, and there has been much debate over its classification. In particular, a great number of studies about the biological markers of depression up to date suggested psychotic depression is a separate disease entity. So, the aim of this study is to see what meanings the results of some tests have in regard to the biological diagnosis and classification of the depression. The 14 psychotically depressed patients and 14 non-psychotically depressed patients from 20 to 57 years of age were given DST , Brain CT, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD ), and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale(B P R S ). The authors compared the results of these tests and analyzed the correlation among them . The psychotically depressed patient group marked significantly high scores on DST (P < 0 .0 5 ) ， VR (ventricular-brain ratio) ( P < 0 .0 5 )，BPRS (P < 0 .0 0 1 ) compared to then on -psychotically depressed patients. And there were some items in HRSD & BPRS that have significantly different scores between two groups, but there was no significant correlation among DST , Brain CT, clinical symptom scales. These finings suggest that the psychotic depression is different from then on -psychotic depression biologically and is a separate disease entity. But no correlation among the results of the tests suggest that they are not correlatd in the pathophysiology of depression