ReviewFrontiers in psychology2015
Problematic assumptions have slowed down depression research: why symptoms, not syndromes are the way forward.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
141 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 376 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring Heterogeneity in perinatal depression: a comprehensive review.BMC psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Individual Patient Data Network Analysis of the Residual Symptom Structure Following Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Escitalopram, Mirtazapine and Venlafaxine for Depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Reproductive decision-making of Black women living with HIV: A systematic review.Women's health (London, England)Pooled it
- A guided single session intervention to reduce intrusive memories of work-related trauma: a randomised controlled trial with healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC medicine · 2024Trial
- Relations among daily symptoms of depression.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Anxiety and depression subtypes and their psychotherapy response: A network analysis of 33,675 patients.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- The topology of adolescent mental health.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- The Longitudinal Interplay Between Loneliness and Depressive Symptoms During Late Childhood: Cross-Lagged Panel Network Analyses.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2026Article
- Comparison of depressive symptoms between heterosexual and sexual minority university students: network analysis.Psicologia, reflexao e critica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS · 2026Article
- Disclosing depressive symptoms: perceived sensitivity of PHQ-9 items in a general population sample.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Craving as a transdiagnostic marker of addiction? A perspective for behavioral addictions.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Beyond deficits: which executive functions link to which NSSI behaviors? A network analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Understanding Anxiety Symptoms of Mood Disorders Across Bipolar and Major Depressive Disorder Using Network Analysis.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2025Article
- Longitudinal changes in physical and psychological outcomes in spousal vs. non-spousal caregivers for patients with end-stage liver disease.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Network analysis of mutuality and depression symptoms in stroke survivors in China.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Interleukin-6 moderates the relationship between social support, strain, and future depressive symptoms.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Links between self-monitoring data collected through smartphones and smartwatches and the individual disease trajectories of adult patients with depressive disorders: Study protocol of a one-year observational trial.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2025Article
- Prevalence of depression and its network structure and association with quality of life in older adults with hypertension: findings of a national survey.Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society · 2025Article
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Major depression (MD) is a highly heterogeneous diagnostic category. Diverse symptoms such as sad mood, anhedonia, and fatigue are routinely added to an unweighted sum-score, and cutoffs are used to distinguish between depressed participants and healthy controls. Researchers then investigate outcome variables like MD risk factors, biomarkers, and treatment response in such samples. These practices presuppose that (1) depression is a discrete condition, and that (2) symptoms are interchangeable indicators of this latent disorder. Here I review these two assumptions, elucidate their historical roots, show how deeply engrained they are in psychological and psychiatric research, and document that they contrast with evidence. Depression is not a consistent syndrome with clearly demarcated boundaries, and depression symptoms are not interchangeable indicators of an underlying disorder. Current research practices lump individuals with very different problems into one category, which has contributed to the remarkably slow progress in key research domains such as the development of efficacious antidepressants or the identification of biomarkers for depression. The recently proposed network framework offers an alternative to the problematic assumptions. MD is not understood as a distinct condition, but as heterogeneous symptom cluster that substantially overlaps with other syndromes such as anxiety disorders. MD is not framed as an underlying disease with a number of equivalent indicators, but as a network of symptoms that have direct causal influence on each other: insomnia can cause fatigue which then triggers concentration and psychomotor problems. This approach offers new opportunities for constructing an empirically based classification system and has broad implications for future research.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.