Patterns of symptom change in anxious depressed outpatients treated with different drugs

Patients with mixtures of anxiety and depressive mood of rather modest degree constitute a majority in the psychiatric outpatient population. Drug treatments are employed to produce symptomatic relief. In this study, thirteen commonly used psychotherapeutic drugs were compared for efficacy in producing change in symptoms of anxiety, depressive mood, and psychomotor activation level in this most common type of psychiatric clinic patient. The drugs were found to differ in relative effect on anxiety and depressive mood. Paradoxically, the major and minor tranquilizers produced greater effect on depressive mood than anxiety, while the more sedative of the tricyclic antidepressants produced relatively greater effect on anxiety. Within each of the three major drug classes, the more sedative members of the class tended to have relatively greater effect on anxiety and the less sedative tended to have relatively greater effect on depressive mood components of the symptom picture.