Background: Data about follow-up after acute pharmacological treatment of psychotic depression are scarce.

For the next 15 years she was treated for psychotic depression.

Conclusions: Patients with psychotic depression had a lower risk to experience relapse after successful ECT.

The study also introduces the concept of age as an important variable influencing psychotic depression.

In psychotic depression the suggestions for the first, third and fourth steps are the same.

Electroconvulsive therapy is particularly effective for psychotic depression.

Compared with patients with nonpsychotic depression, those with psychotic depression have depressive symptoms that are individually more severe.

Trends were observed for psychotic depression to be associated with poor subjective social support and with bipolar illness.

The biology and phenotypes of the mouse models resemble those of psychotic depression, a common and debilitating psychiatric disease.

The research paper links the condition generally to underlying psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, psychotic depression and bipolar mood disorder.

The major observations were a beneficial influence on drive in most patients, while paranoid symptoms worsened markedly, rendering the substance contraindicated in psychotic depression.

This result strengthens the hypothesis that psychotic depression might be a specific depression subtype with a favorable ECT outcome up to six months after ECT.

Authors' conclusions: Psychotic depression is heavily understudied, limiting confidence in the conclusions drawn.