Depressed mood and subsequent physical illness.

The authors describe the results of a matched case-control analysis in which 82 pairs of subjects were selected from a large-scale community study carried out in two general populations. Cases were those of persons hospitalized during an interval between two interviews for an illness starting during that interval or persons who died during the interval. Controls were persons with no new illnesses or hospitalizations during the interval. No relationship between measures of depressive symptomatology or depressed mood and subsequent physical illness was shown. This result corroborates the findings of prospective studies in more selected populations and suggests that it is unlikely that depressed mood is related to subsequent physical illness.