Concordance between self-report and clinician's assessment of depression

In order to assess differences between self-assessment and clinician's asse ssment of depression, 64 depressed in-patients were assessed for depressive symptomatology at admission (DG), 10 days (D10) and 28 days (D28) after th e beginning of antidepressant treatment, using the Inventory for Depressive Symptomatology-Clinician Rated (IDS-C) and the Inventory for Depressive Sy mptomatology-Self-Ra ted (IDS-SR). Associated symptoms (SCL-90R) were asses sed at D0 and personality dimensions (TCI) at D28. Although agreement was h igh between IDS-C and IDS-SR total scores, D0, D0-D10 and D0-D28 total scor es were significantly different between IDS-C and IDS-SR, showing a higher sensitivity to change for IDS-C as compared to IDS-SR. Differences between IDS-C and IDS-SR were due mostly to mood items and not to somatic items. Di screpancies between self-assessment and clinician's assessment of depressiv e symptomatology were linked neither to age, sex, familial status, single/r ecurrent and length of episode, nor to depression severity, but to associat ed symptoms and, to a lesser extent, personality dimensions: patients over- estimating their depressive symptomatology change relative to the psychiatr ist tended to score high on phobic anxiety, Cooperativeness (especially Soc ial Acceptance) and Self-Transcendence (especially Self-forgetfulness) and vice-versa. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.