Prognostic effects of biographical data and differences between neurotic depressive, endogenous depressive and healthy subjects

Biographical data are not significantly influenced by depressive mood and depressive cognition. For endogenous depressives there is no significant predictive effect of biographical variables on duration and outcome of therapy. However, neurotic depressives show a significant predictive effect of neuroticism and of aim-relatedness on changes of mood. There is no significant difference in the duration of inpatient treatment for neurotic and endogenous depressives. Neurotic and endogenous depressives do not differ in mean SDS-score at the beginning of inpatient treatment. Neurotic depressives show less improvement in depressivity but both types of depression show a significant improvement during inpatient therapy. The depressive groups show significantly higher scores on the scale "neuroticism" and significantly lower scores on the scale "aim-relatedness and unspecific motivation", whereas the healthy controls show significantly lower or rather higher scores on those variables. Neurotic depressive subjects show significantly higher scores on "aim-relatedness and unspecific motivation" as well as a significantly higher "mean subjective stress index" whereas endogenous depressive subjects show significantly lower scores on both scales.