Findings on depressive patients indicate that depressives have electrophysiological characteristics similar to those of schizophrenics, in that they exhibit reduced Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) amplitudes and more distinct Postimperative Negative Variations (PINVs) than normal controls. In a biofeedback experiment, 8 medicated male inpatients with the DSM III-R diagnosis of "Bipolar Diso...

In one form of a contingency judgement task individuals must judge the relationship between an action and an outcome. There are reports that depressed individuals are more accurate than are non-depressed individuals in this task. In particular, nondepressed individuals are influenced by manipulations that affect the salience of the outcome, especially outcome probability. They overestimate a co...

P300 component of the event related potential (ERP) provides one neurophysiological index of cognitive dysfunction in depression. Forty subjects fulfilling DSM-III criteria for depression were compared to 40 age and sex matched normal controls. The P300 was recorded using the auditory odd-ball paradigm. Depressives had a significantly prolonged P300 latency and reduced P300 amplitude as compare...

A Family Interaction Patterns Scale (FIPS) consisting of 106 items pertaining to six areas of family functioning: leadership, communication, role, reinforcement, cohesiveness, social support system; was standardised by administering it to 30 neurotic depressives, 30 hysterical neurotics, 20 alcoholics and 30 normal, and one of their family members. HIPS mean score for depressives, hystericals, ...

Based on a survey of the classic literature and studies examining the correlates of a clinical diagnosis of endogenous or nonendogenous depression, we found 14 variables that should discriminate endogenous and nonendogenous depressives. We applied four definitions of endogenous depression (Feinberg and Carroll, DSM-III, Research Diagnostic Criteria, and Newcastle) to a consecutive series of 152...

We propose that people with negative self-views are rejected because they gravitate to partners who view them unfavorably. In relation to nondepressed college students (n = 28), depressives (n = 13) preferred interaction partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 1). Similarly, in relation to nondepressives (n = 106), depressives (n = 10) preferred friends or dating partners who evaluated t...

This report examines the hospital stay of psychiatric in-patients in a general hospital psychiatric setting.The hospital stay days, psychiatric diagnosis, outcome, number of re-admission and some socio-demographic details of patients admitted during one year period were recorded and analysed. The mean hospital stay was 29.39 ± 20.43 days. 60% patients stayed less than 4 weeks. The mean hospital...

Manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder) afflicts approximately 2.3 million American adults. Although earnings, unemployment, and labor force participation patterns have been analyzed for manic-depressives in the economics literature, occupational choice has yet to be explored. A number of psychiatric studies link bipolar illness and occupational choice, focusing on occupational creativity. ...

A functional utility model of depressive resistance is advanced, drawing upon modern portfolio theory of how individuals decide to allocate resources. According to this microeconomic model, depressed individuals believe they have few present and future resources and low utility of gain in a market that is volatile and downward sloping. Depression is viewed as a strategy to avoid further loss, r...