Article Abstract:
Thirty-seven patients with major depression and 41 patients with major depression plus a co-existing psychiatric or medical condition (compound depression) were compared during the acute stage of depressive illness and during a one-year follow-up after hospital discharge. Throughout the follow-up, patients were given repeated tests to assess depression, overall functioning and social readjustment. During the acute phase of depression, no differences were found between groups in terms of psychosocial variables, depressive symptoms, suicidal thinking or functional ability. Differences between groups were not found until the third month after discharge, when the pure depression group demonstrated better overall global adjustment than the compound depressed patients. From the eighth month on, differences between groups remained consistently significant, with the pure depression group demonstrating far better scores for overall functioning and social adjustment. Approximately twice as many patients with pure depression were fully recovered by the end of the follow-up, although both groups had received similar proportions of therapy and medication management. No gender differences in recovery rates were found among patients with compound depression but, by the end of the follow-up, twice as many men as women with pure depression had recovered. Although several other studies have also found a trend for higher recovery rates for depressed males, it is not yet known whether the gender differences are related to social role phenomena or to biological differences in depressive illness between sexes. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
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Article Abstract:
A study was conducted to replicate and expand research concerning depression and its relation to dysfunctional families. The study had 93 subjects who were admitted into a university-affiliated hospital for clinical depression. The results are three-fold. First, validation of the method of classifying dysfunctional families has begun; second, depressed patients with dysfunctional families are not significantly related to those who have functional families; lastly, those with dysfunctional families took longer to heal.
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Article Abstract:
A repeated measures longitudinal design was used to examine whether global family functioning was associated with the presence of a concurrent bipolar episode as well as whether global family functioning was associated with the presence of maniac depressive episodes in following 3 months. The results suggest that global family functioning and bipolar episodes may fluctuate in concert with each other but that global family is not associated with subsequent changes in episode status.
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