Prediction of short-term outcome of neurotic-depressive inpatients. Results of an empirical study of 134 inpatients.

A study was carried out involving 134 neurotic-depressive inpatients (according to ICD-9) treated with cognitive behaviour therapy and in a subgroup additionally with antidepressants. Using standardized rating instruments, a large set of potential predictor variables was tested. After cross-validation according to the split-half technique, only very few of these proved to be suitable as predictors for the main outcome criteria. These predictors included certain aspects of social functioning before index admission, intensity of depressive symptoms at admission and the degree of self-evaluated mood disturbances three weeks after admission. Several predictors known from the literature could not be reproduced in this study, demonstrating the well-known instability of most predictor findings. On the other side, the predictor profile of the neurotic-depressive patients was quite similar to that found in endogenous depressives, a result which might--together with other findings, such as the response of neurotic depressives to antidepressants--question the traditional subclassification of functional depressive states into these subgroups.