Depressive Symptoms and Depressive Diagnoses in a Community Population

Abstract

• A multivariate classification technique was used to examine whether depressive symptoms and symptoms frequently associated with depressive disorders would cluster into recognizable syndromes that parallel traditionalDSM-IIIpsychiatric diagnoses. An analysis was made of all respondents in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) project of the Piedmont region of North Carolina who reported suffering from depressive symptoms (n = 406) at the second wave of the ECA study. The analysis identified five profiles of symptoms that adequately described the interrelationships of the symptoms as reported in the population. One profile included a set of symptoms nearly identical to the symptoms associated with theDSM-IIIclassification of major depression. Other depressive syndromes emerged and included a premenstrual syndrome among younger women and a mixed anxiety/depression syndrome. The existence of these other depressive syndromes may explain the present discrepancy in the epidemiologic literature between a high prevalence of depressive symptoms and a low prevalence of traditional depressive diagnoses in community populations.