Social Psychological Aspects of Reporting Behavior: Lifetime Depressive Episode Reports

This study examines how social psychological states influence reports of lifetime depressive disorder. The results are based on five waves of interviews with a community sample (analytic N = 601) of adults. Approximately one participant in four gives responses to a lifetime screening question at follow-up that are inconsistent with reports made three to four years earlier; the predominant type of inconsistency is failure to report a previously reported depressive episode. These discrepancies are not random, but follow orderly patterns. The presence of either internal symptom cues or external stress cues appears to prompt recollection of past disorder. This tendency is most pronounced among the previously asymptomatic or among those who made earlier depressive episode reports in conjunction with stress reports. Individuals seem to alter their reports of past psychological disorder to make past states consistent with current states.