Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:439-444
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
Dysfunctional attitudes in depressed patients before and after clinical treatment and in normal control subjects
ED Peselow, C Robins, P Block, F Barouche and RR Fieve
Department of Psychology, School of Medicine, New York University, New York.
To evaluate the role of maladaptive thinking patterns in depression, the
authors administered the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale to 112 depressed
patients before and after 3-6 weeks of treatment with antidepressants or
placebo. Twenty-two normal subjects were also assessed twice. Depressed
patients had a significantly higher initial mean score than control
subjects, but during treatment their score significantly decreased, and the
posttreatment score of those with complete recoveries was nearly as low as
the control subjects' final score. The higher the initial dysfunctional
attitude score the poorer the response to treatment. Patients with
endogenous depression had significantly lower scores than nonendogenously
depressed patients.
