Some Preliminary Observations on a Questionnaire Technique for Classifying Depressive Illness: Its Relationship with Clinical Diagnosis and a Biological Technique for Depressive Classification

Abstract

A questionnaire designed to assist in the classification of depressive illness, was administered to 20 acute depressive patients and 10 normal controls. Patient classification according to the decision rules employed by the questionnaire, were compared with patient classification arrived at by symptomatic (diagnostic) and physiological (G.S.R. inhibition threshold) means. It was found that a preponderance of patients classified as "endogenous depressives" by the questionnaire technique, also had clinical diagnoses of endogenous depression, and had low G.S.R. inhibition thresholds relative to normals. Furthermore a preponderance of patients classified as "non-endogenous depressives" by the questionnaire technique, had clinical diagnoses of neurotic depressive illness, and had high G.S.R. inhibition thresholds relative to normals. This supports the assertion that the questionnaire technique has some validity in the classification of depressive illness.

Depression: Inside and Outside the Hospital Setting

“…In the light of the findings of the present study, it appears possible that the self-rated Zung scale used by Blashki failed to find any difference between general practice and hospital patients because it is predominantly a measure of depressive intensity. Its results were comparable to those produced by the LPD severity of depression score in the present study and are in keeping with Byrne's (1975) finding that the Zung and LPD measures of depression correlate significantly.…”

“…In the present study, this distinction was derived from patients' responses to the LPD questionnaire. Although some misclassification is inevitable whether either clinical or psychometric methods are used the findings of Pilowsky and McGrath (1970) and Byrne (1975) support the validity of the LPD classification procedure described by Pilowsky and Boulton (1970). In the present study the class allocation of hospital, as opposed to general practice patients, was consistent with these results.…”

Short‐term course of depression following attempted suicide: a preliminary report

“…The methodology and validation of the LPD questionnaire have been reported previously (12)(13)(14). The categories defined have been found to be significantly associated with clinical diagnoses (11,15,16).…”

Depression in Young Women who have Attempted Suicide

“…The LPD depression score has been shown to correlate highly with the Zung depression score, r = 0.88 (Byrne, 1975). Although there must inevitably be false positives and negatives in the allocation of patients on the basis of the decision rule to the endogenous depression, nonendogenous depression and non-depressive syndromes, such a categorisation is significantly associated not only with clinical diagnosis (Pilowsky, 1969;Byrne, 1975;Pilowsky, 1979), but with treatment choice (Pilowsky and McGrath, 1970) and certain psychophysiological measures (Byrne, 1975).…”