Melancholia: from DSM-III to DSM-III-R.

On July 26, 1985, an ad hoc committee appointed by the APA Work Group to Revise DSM-III met and reviewed the research on the validity of the DSM-III criteria for melancholia. In this paper the proceedings of the meeting are related. After reviewing studies of the validity of the DSM-III melancholia criteria, the authors describe the committee's discussion of alternative proposals for DSM-III-R and the process of developing the new DSM-III-R criteria.