[New diagnostic strategies in psychiatry by means of video-technique. I. The use of time-blind video analysis for the evaluation of antidepressant drug trials (author's transl)].

The use of audio-video methods allowed the decrease of subjective factors influencing ratings of psychopathological phenomina. TV-stored interviews, recorded at separate days, may be compared almost simultaneously. In this study a rating of severity of depression was made of patients under antidepressive medication on days 0, 10, 20. (Mianserin was compared with Amitriptyline in a double-blind-trial). This method rendered it possible to detect significant differences between therapeutic profiles over time. The same result was reached independently by both investigators. The judgement of depression was based on a global impression and not on the evaluation of isolated psychopathological symptoms. No absolute measurement of depression was possible. The described method of a time-blind-analysis of TV-stored interviews constitutes a considerable progress in the assessment of a drug's profile in time, particularly if rating-scales are used in the same manner.