Clinical features and treatment outcome were compared in depressed outpatients with and without a history of emotional and physical abuse (EPA), including childhood maltreatment. Patients were initially randomized to IPT or SSRI and then augmented with the second treatment if they did not remit with monotherapy. Assessments included the SCID-I, the SCID-II for DSM-IV diagnoses, the HRSD, the QIDS and the Mood Spectrum Self-Report (MOODS-SR). Seventy-eight (25%) patients reported a history of EPA; 60 (76.9%) were women. Patients with a history of EPA did not differ from those without on HRSD scores at baseline, but showed an earlier age at onset of depression and a longer duration of illness. The two groups differed on several mood spectrum factors, namely: 'depressive mood' (15.6±4.9 vs. 13.5±5.4; p<0.004), 'psychomotor retardation' (11.7±4.5 vs. 9.6 ±4.7; p<0.001), 'drug and illness-related depression' (1.3±1.3 vs. 0.6±1.0; p<0.0001), and 'neurovegetative symptoms' (8.3±2.6 vs. 6.9±2.9; p<0.0001). Patients with EPA had also a significantly longer time to remission (89 vs. 67 days, log-rank test, p=0.035). The need for augmentation treatment was significantly more frequent among patients with EPA than in those without. The present study suggests that patients with a history of EPA show a subtype of depression characterized by poor treatment response and more severe neurovegetative and psychomotor symptoms.
Background
While previous attempts to elucidate the factor structure of depression tended to agree on a central focus on depressed mood, other factors were not replicated across studies. By examining data from a large number of items covering the range of depressive symptoms, the aim of the present study is to contribute to the identification of the structure of depression on a lifetime perspective.
Methods
The study sample consisted of 598 patients with unipolar depression who were administered the Mood Spectrum Self-Report (lifetime version) in Italian (N=415) or English (N=183). In addition to classical exploratory factor analysis using tetrachoric correlation coefficients, an IRT-based factor analysis approach was adopted to analyze the data on 74 items of the instrument that explore cognitive, mood and energy/activity features associated with depression.
Results
Six factors were identified, including `Depressive Mood', `Psychomotor Retardation', `Suicidality', `Drug/Illness related depression', `Psychotic Features' and `Neurovegetative Symptoms', accounting overall for 48.3% of the variance of items.
Limitations
Clinical information on onset of depression and duration of illness is available only for 350 subjects. Therefore, differences between sites can only be partially accounted using available data.
Conclusions
Our study confirms the central role of depressed mood, psychomotor retardation and suicidality and identifies the factors `Drug/Illness related depression', `Psychotic features' and the neurovegetative dysregulation not captured by the instruments most frequently used in previous studies. The identification of patients with specific profiles on multiple factors may be useful in achieving greater precision in neuroimaging studies and in informing treatment selection.
The psychomotor activation factor proved to be the most potent discriminator of those with unipolar versus bipolar diagnoses. The items that constitute this factor, together with those that constitute the mixed instability, suicidality, and euphoria factors, might be useful in making the differential diagnosis.
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