The author, who works in the Northeast of Brazil, in an area noted for its underdevelopment, has gathered data mainly from his university clinic (general hospital), out-patient (73 patients) hospitalized cases (75 patients) and also from patients in his private clinic. The group with the lowest number is the "endogenous depressed" (20 manic depressive psychoses) followed by 55 senile and 81 of other types. Out of 12 suicides, only one was of the "endogenous depressed" group and out of 11 who tried to commit suicide, only 4 were of the "endogenous" group. From this the author has deduced that the "endogenous depressed" in his region is currently the less frequent and less serious of the depression cases; this fact has also been confirmed by the higher rate of remissions in this type of depression. Perhaps the easier means of diagnosis in this type of depression as well as the excellence of the convulsive therapy explains the promptness, precision and the usual success of the treatment. In the author's report senile depression is presented, as in all other parts of the world, as a problem of increasing severity due to the increase in longevity and the lack of organized assistance for the aged in our region. The most important of the "depression" groups are now the psychoneurotics and the so called "background depressions" (Hintergrundreaktionen - K. Schneider) depressions often found in patients with internal ailments (the so-called "psychoneurotic depressions" are included in the "re-actives"). From the author's report it is apparent that depression is all important in the mental picture even though it is only a component part of it, which is much more frequent and more serious, as statistics on suicide have shown. The author has verified that the most difficult cases to successfully help are those where conditions of poverty, malnutrition, social abandonment, lack of education and profession are creating "modes of life" without hope, leading men to apathy, resignation, passivity and inertia or forming ways of life restricted to the body patterned after existential phylosophy "to exist in the body". Misery in every sense is changing the aspect of existence, demanding adaptation to a lack of everything which leads to the paralysis of desires. For some time our literature has established the character called "Jeca Tatu" who is inert and fatalistic. In the old days, psychiatry proclaimed grief as a primary symptom of depression. The author in his "summing up" has shown that instead of this, what is more prevalent nowadays is the loss of desire with or without grief. This means a way of living in apathy, despair, indifference, in resigned and restrictive conformity or in aggressiveness and sophistication compulsively acquired as much through social-economic conditions as by internal ailments, invalidism, painfull illnesses or strongly restrictive associations; contempt for existence, conflicts, incurable diseases or by gradual annihilation and living in nonconformity from the conditions of decline and old age. The loss of "significance in life" is the common denominator. The majority of the depressed are no longer reached through psychiatry and circulate without "insight" in the social sphere, ignoring their depression or despair, embracing religion or the primitive sects of being content to conform themselves to self slow and passive extinction. Each reacts in his own way masking depression with irritation, complaints, aggressiveness, sophistication, and even delinquency or suicide without seeking for medical aid. Another group of depressed patients will go to all the hospitals and clinics and sooner or later are convinced of the inability to medical resources to solve their tremendous problems and abandon technical treatment. The majority of those who seek psychiatric help are the more enlightened and hopeful that the technique will prove successful but also those who confess that they are unable to manage their own lives look for counsel and support from the doctor and also from medication. The group of depressed patients most frequently studied by classic psychiatry are the traditional of the depressed group. Classic psychiatry divides the depressed into the following groups: endogenous, psychogenic and psychoneurotics, constitutional, symptomatic and organic. The background depression and the existential mentioned in the author's work were inspired by Kurt Schneider and Ludwig Binswanger.