The negative relating of depressed patients: a new approach

A new instrument, the Person's Relating to Others Questionnaire (PROQ), based upon a circular ordering of eight modes of relating, constructed around the two dimensions of Closeness-Distance and Upperness-Lowerness, is used to measure the negative and positive relating of depressed patients. It is shown that patients, compared with population subjects, score significantly higher on Negative Closeness, Distance and Lowerness, but that population subjects score significantly higher on Positive Upperness. There is suggestive evidence that the negative scores of patients who fully recover return to the levels of population subjects, indicating that negative relating is part of the depressive state.