Major Affective Disorder as a Recurrent Illness

The systematic study of the natural course of affective disorders originated with the pioneer work of Kraepelin¹and has continued until recently. However, with the advent of lithium and its widespread use in the prophylaxis of affective disorders, naturalistic data on the course of the illness has become increasingly unavailable. While reviewing the literature on the subject, one is struck by the discrepancies in the reported results...