Correlates of analogue and clinical depression: a further test of the phenomenological continuity hypothesis

Abstract

Background: The use of college students with high scores on a depression rating scale as analogues for depression by psychological researchers has generated controversy. Critics of analogue research argue that depression is qualitatively different in analogue and clinical samples. Objective: To conduct a further comparison of the phenomenology of clinical and analogue depression to determine if the differences between these groups are best understood as quantitative (consistent with the continuity hypothesis) or whether these forms of depression are qualitatively distinct. Method: This study compared 161 outpatients with major depressive disorder to 148 ‘analogue’ subjects (college students with a Beck Depression Inventory score ≥9) and 141 non-distressed controls. Study measures included several proposed personality vulnerability factors for depression, a measure of developmental experiences that may confer vulnerability to adult depression, and family history of emotional disorders. Results: Most comparisons of personality vulnerability factors, developmental experiences and family history information followed a pattern of greatest risk in the clinical group, intermediate risk in the analogue group and lowest risk in the non-distressed group. Noteworthy exceptions included several aspects of perfectionism and a number of childhood experiences reflecting parental over-control, which appeared to be more strongly associated with analogue depression than clinical depression. Implications: Several personality and developmental variables could represent important areas of discontinuity between clinical and analogue depression. However, the overall results were consistent with a growing body of literature suggesting continuity between subthreshold depression symptoms and syndromal depression.