Current Issues in the Classification of Psychotic Major Depression

Depression is one of the most common mental disorders worldwide. There are a number of depression subtypes, and there has been much debate about how to most accu-rately capture and organize the features and subtypes of major depression. We review the current state of categoriz-ing unipolar major depression with psychotic features (psychotic major depression, PMD), including clinical, bi-ological, and treatment aspects of the disorder. We then propose some improvements to the current unipolar major depression categorization system. Finally, we identify im-portant issues in need of further research to help elucidate the subtype of unipolar PMD. Key words: major depression/psychosis/classification Depression is one of the most common mental disorders worldwide, with a current prevalence estimated betwee