The present document is the second of three parts in a review that focuses on recent data from clinical and animal research concerning the biochemical bases of depressive disorders, diagnosis, and treatment. Various receptor/transmitter theories of depressive disorders are discussed in this section. Specifically, data supporting noradrenergic, serotonergic, cholinergic, dopaminergic, GABAergic, and peptidergic theories, as well as interactions between noradrenergic and serotonergic, or cholinergic and catecholaminergic systems are presented. Problems with the data and future directions for research are also discussed. A previous publication, Part I of this review, dealt with the classification of depressive disorders and research techniques for studying the biochemical mechanisms of these disorders. A future publication, Part III of this review, discusses treatments for depression and some of the controversies in this field.

Eleven women with an average age of 23 were evaluated daily for pregnanediol excretion, mood, and behavioral fluctuations during the menstrual cycle. Subjects carefully screened for present and preexisting psychopathology experienced only minor fluctuations in rating on the Moos Menstrual Distress questionnaire (MDQ), only the water retention achieving significance. The other scales on the MDQ and the Spielberger State Anxiety Scale had nonsignificant premenstrual elevations.

The present study objectives were three. First, the factor structure of Chesney and Tasto's Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) was reexamined to determine whether Chesney and Tasto's (1975a) two-factor or Webster's (1980) and Stephenson, Denney, and Aberger's (1983) multifactor result could be replicated. Second, the internalconsistency reliability of the MSQ in the present study was determined. Third, known and suspected menstrual symptom report confounders were deleted from the analysis to determine whether or not exclusion of menstrual symptom confounders results in a factor structure which differs significantly from samples which include known symptom confounders.A "Heterogeneous" sample (n = 330), similar to samples used in previous studies, and a more "homogeneous" sample (n = 230), which deleted menstrual symptom confounders, were utilized in the MSQ factor analysis replication. Six factors resulted from both samples: premenstrual negative affect, menstrual pain, premenstrual pain, gastrointestinal/prostaglandin, water retention, and asymptomatic. Cronbach's alpha internal-consistency reliability was determined to be .89 in the heterogeneous sample and .90 in the homogeneous sample. It was concluded that these results 1) supported the existence of multiple menstrual syndromes and 2) supported the high internal consistency reliability of the MSQ, and 3) indicated the robustness of the factor analytic structure of MSQ's menstrual symptoms to the inclusion of known menstrual symptom confounders.

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