The time estimation of 31 depressive patients (15 endogenous and 16 neurotic depressives) was tested in two ways: the patients had to estimate the length of a preceding discussion and then to estimate the length of the proceeding 1/2 and 2 minutes. The examinations were made before the start of the therapy, after therapeutic sleep deprivation and (with a part of these patients) in the course of a 4 weeks amitriptyline therapy. Before the treatment, the depressives overestimated the time of the just passed discussion and underestimated the lenght of 1/2 and 2 minutes. This could correspond to an acceleration of the «inner watch». The morning after sleep deprivation, the errors were still greater, although the condition of the endogenous depressions improved. On the next day, there was a tendency to revert to the praetherapeutic values (as well as to the clinical evaluation). With the amitriptyline therapy the changes were opposite to those after the sleep deprivation: the errors were smaller, though not entirely corrected. The results are discussed in relation to some previous experimental examinations and to the phenomenological analysis of the time sense of depressives.
This survey shows the different methodological possibilities and fields of
application for the quantification of depressive illnesses. Besides in pharmacology (the
evaluation of the antidepressants) the quantification is applied in physiological and biochemical
research, for comparison of the severity of different depressive illnesses, for differentiation
of the clinical depressive entities, for factor- and configurational analysis and for
epidemiological studies. In the second part the methodological approaches of quantification
are discussed: questionnaires, behavior quantifications, rating scales, quantifications of the
crosscultural background of the depression, experimental-psychological tests and physiological-
pharmacological-biochemical methods. The numerous separate methods are not
described here, but an evaluation of advantages, disadvantages and the source of possible
errors in these methodological approaches is discussed.
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