Time passes slowly for patients with depressive state.

Twenty-three depressive inpatients and the same number of matched non-psychiatric controls were examined on three occasions - following admission, 14 days after, and 28 days after the admission - by administering a self-rating questionnaire of time awareness and Hamilton's Rating Scale for Depression (HRS). The patients were found to feel time passing slowly. This was correlated with the severity of depression expressed as the total HRS score. No significant differences emerged between diagnostic groups, namely endogenous depression, neurotic depression, and schizophrenia or paranoid state with depressive symptoms. Correlations of the time awareness with symptoms listed in the HRS also denied a specific relationship of time awareness to specific diagnoses. The subjective feeling of slow time flow reflects, therefore, the depth of depressive state in general, which is nevertheless not specific to any diagnostic subcategory.