RELATIONSHIP OF PATIENT BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS TO EFFICACY OF PHARMACOTHERAPY IN DEPRESSION

As a part of a Collaborative Depression Treatment Study pretreatment background characteristics (socioeconomic, demographic, and prior psychiatric status) of 163 depressed women were examined to determine whether they were related to the degree of clinical response to amitriptyline. Further analyses were done to determine whether these characteristics could be of use in identifying those women who completed a 4-week course of pharmacotherapy from those who dropped out.It was found that clinically oriented background data related to present and past emotional illness were more highly associated with the degree of treatment response obtained. Sociodemographic characteristics, on the other hand, were more valuable for discriminating between patients who were willing to complete the 4-week course of antidepressant drug treatment and those who dropped out early.