Prediction of Outcome in Depressive Illness by the Newcastle Diagnosis Scale

Abstract

The Newcastle scores of a group of 64 and subsample of 52 severely depressed inpatients were not normally distributed. Evidence for discontinuity in these distributions was adduced from the contrast in outcome between the endogenous and neurotic patients thus defined, the endogenous consistently doing better than the neurotic group. The unipolar/bipolar system failed to predict different results for endogenous and neurotic patients unless unipolar was subdivided into endogenous and neurotic subgroups. The DSM-III criteria for major depression and melancholia failed to identify subgroups of differing prognoses.