Clinical evaluation, self-rated mood, and psychophysiological reactivity in depressing syndromes

Abstract

1. 1. Basic considerations on the linkage between clinical and psychophysiological levels with psychometric methods in normal and psychopathological states are discussed. 2. 2. Intercorrelations between psychophysiological variables and psychological data are much stronger in depressive states than in normals under the effect of drugs. It seems that psychopathology is characterized by fewer degrees of freedom in different psychophysiological systems, central and peripherical. 3. 3. The problem of anxiety and depression in psychophysiological research is discussed, and it is demonstrated that in depressive states, the tonic and the phasic activation systems are affected and that anxiety counteracts the inhibition due to depressiveness in psychophysiological systems such as galvanic skin response (GSR). However, the relationship between self-rating by the patient in the paranoid depression self-rating scale by v. Zerssen, the mood self-rating scale by v. Zerssen, and the clinical rating by the physician with the Hamilton rating scale shows that the physician examining the patient can better distinguish between anxiety and depression than the patient himself. 4. 4. Our results in two studies of the contingent negative variation, evoked potentials and post-imperative negative variation support the pathophysiological hypothesis that depression is not pure disactivation on a psychophysiological level, but rather a problem of active avoidance of external information by the organism.