Short‐term and long‐term measures of cortisol in saliva and hair in atypical and non‐atypical depression

Atypical depression may show lowered rather than raised short-term cortisol levels. Atypical major depressive episodes (A-MDE) may also be more closely linked to environmental factors and show overlap with somatic symptom disorders. Hair specimens allow measuring long-term cortisol levels.Twenty-seven A-MDE and 44 NA-MDE patients and 40 matched controls were tested. Measures of hair cortisol concentration [HCC] covering the previous 3 months and...