Cognition and depression: Issues and future directions

As we noted in the Introduction, the papers in this Special Issue represent a wide range of approaches to examining the relation between cognition and depression. They also raise a number of important specific issues. In this epilogue, we will identify and discuss two major issues in some detail that were touched on by almost all of the papers in this Special Issue: the assessment of cognition in depression and the definition and assessment of vulnerability to depression. We will then offer some concluding comments concerning fruitful directions for future research and the need to integrate cognitive paradigms with more biological approaches to the study of depression.