DEPENDENCY, MATCHING ADVERSITIES, LENGTH OF SURVIVAL AND RELAPSE IN MAJOR DEPRESSION

This paper reports the 1-year follow-up of a sample of depressed patie nts. Social cognitive variables obtained during the index episode, inc luding ideal emotional support, roles and goals investment in various domains and dysfunctional attitudes were used to predict subjects' lik elihood for subsequent relapse. More subjects who experienced severe l ife events in the year were found to have relapsed. However, the predi ctive value of life events was improved if adversity was in the most i nvested domain according to the roles and goals questionnaire that sub jects filled in during their index episode (matching adversity). Subje cts who experienced matching adversity had a 3-fold chance of relapse compared with subjects with nonmatching adversity. The majority of the matching events were in the interpersonal domain. Levels of dysfuncti onal attitudes alone did not predict relapse. However, matching advers ity and the dependency subscale of the dysfunctional attitude scale co ntributed significantly both to whether or not subjects relapsed and t o the number of weeks subjects survived before they relapsed. The high er the level of dependency dysfunctional attitudes, the sooner subject s relapsed. The findings of the follow-up study supported the importan ce of psychological and social factors in determining relapse.