The recognition and treatment of depressive states, as well as their prevention, call for special knowledge and experience. Therefore it was considered desirable that practising physicians with no specialised knowledge of psychiatry should be given more extensive opportunity for post-graduate instruction in the diagnosis and management of depression and also that they should be in a position to collaborate more closely with psychiatrists. Hence the idea of establishing an international committee, the members of which would in their turn set up national committees with the aim of promoting and intensifying post-graduate instruction in their respective countries.