Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Symptoms of depression as a clinical entity have been the object of factor analyses by Hamilton (1960) and by Overall (1962). In each of these studies data consisted of observations of male in-patients whose hospital diagnosis was depression. Subjects were rated on the basis of interview behaviour in sets of items considered relevant to clinical concepts of the disorder. Dimensions obtained in Overall's analysis agreed very closely with factors which had previously been identified in psychiatric ratings of schizophrenic patients (Lorr, 1953; Lorr, McNair, Klett, and Lasky, 1962; Overall and Gorham, 1962). This finding was interpreted as evidence that “certain basic factor dimensions appear in various different types of patients” (Overall, 1962). Hamilton felt that a single word-label might describe qualitatively different behaviours, depending on diagnosis; he therefore insisted on the importance of context (nosological category) in assessing the significance of any given symptom.
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