ABSTRACT
The very word 'neurotic' conjures up the image of a tiresome, over-emotional female. T. Helgason found the lifetime prevalence of neurosis in Iceland to be 9 per cent for men, 17 per cent for women: this applied particularly to depressive, anxiety and aesthenic states, but not to obsessional neurosis. Dysthymic disorder, as defined in DSM III, refers to a neurotic type of chronic depressive mood, short of depressive illness. The most common of all psychiatric complaints ranges from evanescent sadness and lowering of vitality, through tormenting self-denigration and despair, still basically reactive and neurotic, to genetically-determined depressive psychoses. Depression is the commonest reaction, and exacerbation of somatic complaints, particularly gastrointestinal disorders, asthma and psoriasis. Sigmund Freud's paradigm of depression is a prolonged, often delayed reaction, with insomnia, lack of energy, weight loss, sadness, anger and guilt, and inability to enjoy anything. This amounts to neurotic depression with bereavement the precipitating life event.
