Diagnosis, personality and the long-term outcome of depression

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.