Objectives:
Mental disorders may disrupt Autobiographical Memory (AM). An example is overgeneral memories - without details, generalized or semantic. This paper assesses the functioning of AM in a depressive episode (DEP) and alcohol use disorder (ALC).

Methods:
The study compared: hospitalized patients with DEP, ALC (clinical groups), and controls: people hospitalized for gastroenterological conditions (CON) and healthy individuals (PAN) (N = 39 for each; average age: 46.0 ± 13.6, no differences). The specificity of AM was examined by the Autobiographic Memory Test. Participants rated memories in terms of vividness, affective intensity and sign.

Results:
DEP and ALC recalled fewer specific memories than the controls (p < .001 all, positive and negative cue words), with the lowest results in DEP. Clinical groups recalled also more negative and less positive memories (p < .001) than the controls, with a deficit of positive ones in DEP and an excess of negative memories in ALC. An analysis of non-specific responses revealed that ALC recalled more "extended" memories than CON (p < .005) and more "categorical" ones than control groups (p < .05). The DEP group remembered more "semantic associations" than PAN (p < .001).

Conclusions:
The results confirmed the presence of OGM in both clinical groups. ALC disrupts the mechanism of generating specific memories to a lesser extent than mood disorders. Subjects from the clinical groups assess their past more pessimistically than the controls with a reduced number of positive memories in people with DEP, and probably an increased number of negative ones in ALC.