Time perception and affective disorders

The estimation of short-time intervals by 60 control subjects and 56 patients with affective disorders was investigated using the three different methods of metronome adjustment, verbal estimation, and operative estimation (production). The patients were diagnosed according to DSM-III criteria. A group with major depression with melancholia (9), and another group with bipolar depression (8), tended to under-estimate time to about the same extent. A group with manic or hypomanic disorders (11) tended to over-estimate. Patients with major depression without melancholia (9), bipolar disorders in remission (9), and dysthymic disorders (10), had no decided tendencies to under- or over-estimate short time intervals. The estimation of longer intervals (5-10 min.) was not significantly altered in the patient groups. The results are discussed in the context of earlier investigations, which mainly have yielded no changes in ability to estimate time intervals despite a subjective feeling that time is passing slowly or quickly in affective disorders.