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Diagnosis, Personality and the Long-term Outcome of Depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Gavin Andrews*
Affiliation:
Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety Disorders, The University of New South Wales at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney
Megan Neilson
Affiliation:
Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety Disorders, St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney
Caroline Hunt
Affiliation:
Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety Disorders, The University of New South Wales
Gavin Stewart
Affiliation:
Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety Disorders, The University of New South Wales
L. G. Kiloh
Affiliation:
The University of New South Wales
*
Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety Disorders, 299 Forbes St, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010, Australia

Abstract

Patients diagnosed in the late 1960s as suffering from either endogenous or neurotic depression, or as presenting with depression but discharged with another neurotic diagnosis, were followed for 15 years. Diagnosis at index admission did not predict overall outcome, but patients with endogenous depression, an apparently stable diagnosis, had longer index admissions, were readmitted sooner, but spent less time ill than patients in either of the neurosis groups. Personality abnormality accounted for 20% of the variance in outcome in the neurotic groups and only 2% of the variance in the endogenous group. Thus there is evidence that endogenous and neurotic depression are two illnesses and that, in the neuroses particularly, prognosis will depend on the extent to which these personality abnormalities are modified by treatment.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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