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The placebo effect is a well-known phenomenon through medicine and has been used as a treatment in many different pathologies. Nowadays it is being used as a control for the design of trials about the new psychotropic drugs. Within Psychiatry and more specifically regarding the affective disorders, responses to the use of inactive substances have been more frequently described and the rates recorded go from 20% to 49%.We have made a review of the literature published in this field in order to identify the predictors which are possibly involved in those patients with depression who have positive or negative responses to placebo. The most significant data come from the social, nosological, clinical, evolutive and, above all, neuroendocrinologic predictors. To finish, it is important to remark how inconsistent and heterogeneous is the response to placebo, as well as the ethic and legal problems that its use can carry.

Introduction: Some authors affirm that the anxiety of panic attacks is endogenous and of different quality that the common fear. But objective clinical data don't exist that confirm that observation., Method: The authors study by means of a discriminant analysis the description of the anxiety made by subject with panic attacks and normal subjects with common fear., Results: It meet a discriminant function that shows the existence of qualitative differences between both experiences., Conclusion: It seem to have achieved enough empirical support in order to sustain that the anxiety of panic attacks and the common fear are two qualitatively different experiences; presumably due to their several origin.

Binge Eating Disorder is a new eating disorder that describes the eating disturbance of some individuals who suffer from recurrent binge eating but who do not engage in the compensatory behaviors to avoid weight gain seen in bulimia Nervosa. Problems and advantages associated with the inclusion of Binge Eating Disorder in Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study (Appendix B) in DSM-IV are reviewed.

Some patients seen for the treatment of an eating disorder do not fulfill criteria for either of the two established disorders (Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa). This large number of patients currently can only be diagnosed as eating disorder not otherwise specified-EDNOS-(in DSM-III-R) or as atypical disorder (in ICD-19). The authors study some proposal of definition and classification of the Eating Disorders chapter for EDNOS and atypical disorders would be far smaller than they are now. Problems associated with the inclusion of weight concern as a necessary and defining criterion (the crucial diagnostic issue) are reviewed.

The authors have researched the test-retest reliability for the Anelasticoendosthenia Index. Data show good correlations. The agreement for two evaluations (Kw = 0.89) and the success probability in 2nd evaluation respect first one (mu = 0.98) are good.

The factors found in the approach taken towards the disturbances caused by anxiety on the part of the doctors working outside the hospital environment are analyzed. After studying a sample of 45 patients seen consecutively in the outpatient clinica of a general hospital and evaluating their clinical, evolutive, social-demographical characteristics and the type of medical care received previously, we found an important tendency towards diagnostic error which does not seem to be related to the degree of specialization by the medical practitioner who treated the patient. A profile of a patient having a higher risk of receiving and incorrect diagnosis is elaborated.

The authors research the psychopathological continuum between neurosis and depression with the Pathological Sadness Index. Results could show it presence but its expression is different in the two factors of the Index.

The authors research the predictive validity of the Spanish version of the Geriatric Depression Screening Scale. Cutoff 18 show a sensitivity of 0.94, specificity of 0.94, with a 6% of misclassified cases. Weighted Kappa reliability equal to 0.88.

The authors research the characteristics of sadness in neurotic, depressed patients and in subjects with depressive reactions, using the Pathological Sadness Index. They research an aspect of the López Ibor's hypotheses about the neurosis as diseases of the mood. The neurotic patients suffer from a sadness with pathological characteristics, as depressed subjects, instead of the normal sadness suffered by people with reactions.

A prevalence of the 90% of "distinct quality" in depressed is detected using the Pathological Sadness Index. Its presence is non dependent of the presence or absence of life event and it is more frequent in melancholic subjects. The Pathological Sadness Index show a presence of "distinct quality" in 83% of cases without subjective experience of it.

This paper reports a comparative study of medical depressed inpatients. A total of 100 medical depressed cases were screened and compared with those of a control sample of 100 depressed inpatients in a psychiatric unit. Diagnostic information was obtained from records. Comparisons on a number of demographic variables show no difference on age, sex, socioeconomic class and marital status. The most striking differences between psychiatric depression and medical depression were on the clinical features, having the medical sample more anxious and hypochondriachal types and less delusional and retarded cases. Medical depressives patients were less prone to report suicidal feelings. Recognition of the depressive syndromes by the staff of the medical wards was poor. Somatic symptoms form a prominent part of the symptomatology of the medical depression.