Individual variability in self-reported improvement for depressed psychiatric inpatients on the MCMI-II

This study evaluated self-reported symptom improvement on the MCM-II Dysthymia (D) scale for 109 depressed psychiatric inpatients. Rather than presenting the findings in traditional "group mean" format, data were analyzed to highlight the variability of clinical improvement for individual patients. Two criteria for judging clinically significant improvement (Jacobson, Follette, & Revenstorf, 1984) were employed, namely, that the client move from the dysfunctional to functional range during treatment and that the change between pretest and posttest be statistically reliable. Results indicated that 39 (35.8%) of the 109 patients met these criteria.