Clinical and psychosocial predictors of recurrence in recovered bipolar and unipolar depressives: a one-year controlled prospective study.

Unipolar and bipolar patients with a chronic illness pattern were investigated to evaluate the relevance of clinical and psychosocial risk factors to predict subsequent recurrence. Self-esteem, social adjustment, social support and attributional style were assessed in 27 recovered bipolar patients, 24 recovered unipolar patients maintained on lithium or antidepressant prophylaxis and 26 healthy controls. They were further interviewed every 2 months in a 1-year period in order to diagnose affective episodes according to Research Diagnostic Criteria. Survival analyses and Cox's regressions demonstrated that being a unipolar patient and showing poor social adjustment were the strongest predictors of the occurrence of affective episodes. Self-esteem, social support, attributional style and clinical characteristics, such as age at illness onset, number of previous episodes or of previous hospitalizations and presence of affective disorder in first-degree relatives, were not found to be risk factors for further recurrence. This study stresses the importance of social adjustment in evaluating the outcome of affectively ill patients maintained on medication prophylaxis.

Growth hormone release after desipramine in depressive illness.

The effect of i.m. administration of 75 mg of desipramine on growth hormone (GH) secretion was investigated in a sample of 87 patients with major depressive disorders and in 31 normal controls. The GH response was lower in depressed females compared to depressed males, but no such difference was present in controls. In the premenopausal female group, GH response was significantly lower in depressed patients than in controls. No significant difference was found between normal males and male depressed patients. In the premenopausal group, no difference emerged between endogenous and nonendogenous depressed women.