A study of the dexamethasone suppression test in hospitalized depressed patients

90 patients with a primary depressive illness, admitted consecutively to one psychiatric ward were studied. All patients had the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) done before initial treatment. First treatment response was correlated with the DST results. The non-suppressors, as a group, improved with treatment better than the suppressors. However, unlike in previous studies, no relationship was found between non-suppression and poor response to antidepressant medication.