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Summary Background The perinatal period is a time of high risk for onset of depressive disorders and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality, including maternal suicide. Perinatal depression comprises a heterogeneous group of clinical subtypes, and further refinement is needed to improve treatment outcomes. We sought to empirically identify and describe clinically relevant phenotypic subtypes of perinatal depression, and further characterise subtypes by time of symptom onset within pregnancy and three post-partum periods. Methods Data were assembled from a subset of seven of 19 international sites in the Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment (PACT) Consortium. In this analysis, the cohort was restricted to women aged 19–40 years with information about onset of depressive symptoms in the perinatal period and complete prospective data for the ten-item Edinburgh postnatal depression scale (EPDS). Principal components and common factor analysis were used to identify symptom dimensions in the EPDS. The National Institute of Mental Health research domain criteria functional constructs of negative valence and arousal were applied to the EPDS dimensions that reflect states of depressed mood, anhedonia, and anxiety. We used k-means clustering to identify subtypes of women sharing symptom patterns. Univariate and bivariate statistics were used to describe the subtypes. Findings Data for 663 women were included in these analyses. We found evidence for three underlying dimensions measured by the EPDS: depressed mood, anxiety, and anhedonia. On the basis of these dimensions, we identified five distinct subtypes of perinatal depression: severe anxious depression, moderate anxious depression, anxious anhedonia, pure anhedonia, and resolved depression. These subtypes have clear differences in symptom quality and time of onset. Anxiety and anhedonia emerged as prominent symptom dimensions with post-partum onset and were notably severe. Interpretation Our findings show that there might be different types and severity of perinatal depression with varying time of onset throughout pregnancy and post partum. These findings support the need for tailored treatments that improve outcomes for women with perinatal depression. Funding Janssen Research & Development.

Although preliminary, these results indicate that riluzole may have antidepressant properties in some patients.

The dopamine agonist pramipexole was found to have significant antidepressant effects in patients with bipolar II depression.

The changes in diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) from the fourth to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) may appear small but have important consequences for how the diagnosis is used. In DSM-5, MDD is part of the new "Depressive disorders" section, which is separate from "Bipolar disorders", marking a division in what had been known as "Mood disorders". A small wording change has expanded the core mood criterion to include hopelessness, potentially broadening the diagnosis. The replacement of an operationalized bereavement exclusion with a call for clinical judgment in distinguishing normal reactions to significant loss from a disorder in need of clinical attention makes the diagnosis less objective and complicates investigations of the relationship between adversity and depression. A new persistent depressive disorder category is intended to encompass both dysthymia and chronic depression, but its relationship to MDD is ambiguous with conflicting statements on whether the two diagnoses should be concurrent if both sets of criteria are fulfilled. Clarification is also needed on whether MDD can be concurrent with the new broad "other specified bipolar and related disorders". New specifiers of MDD "with anxious distress" and "with mixed features" allow characterization of additional symptoms. The specifier "with perinatal onset" expands on the DSM-IV "postnatal onset" to include onset during pregnancy. We review the changes in MDD definition, provide guidance on their implementation and discuss their implications for clinical practice and research.