[Social adaptation of patients with recurrent depressive episodes]

A catamnestic study has been carried out in 45 patients with "major affective disturbance" precedents so as to ascertain the possible presence of a "residual syndrome" or a personality "at risk" for depressive disease emerging during so-called interval periods. Special attention is paid to examination of social adaptation in these periods. The instruments employed for the investigation, apart from the clinical conversation and documentation relating to prior admissions were: APDI (record of personal data in the case of adults), the Hamilton Scale, the B.P.R.S. (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale), the S.A.S. (Scale of Social Adaptation) and Rorschach's Psychodiagnosis. The results obtained evidence a series of more or less marked, but always present psychic disturbances characterising the interval period, with problems of adaptation both to working activity and to social relations, especially in the extra-familial environment. These disturbances are attributable in part to a personality at risk and in part to an authentic residual syndrome.