Typological prediction of response to amitriptyline: a replication study

This paper reports a replication study of prediction of outcome by a cluster-analysis derived four-group typoloy of depression. 143 acutely depressed women were treated with amitriptyline for 4 weeks. In replication of the earlier findings, anxious depressives showed the worst response, hostile depressives and young depressive with personality disorder the best, with psychotic depressive intermediate. The findings provide further validating evidence for the typology, and for the view that nonpsychotic depressives are heterogenous.