Distinguishing depressed from nondepressed individuals using energy and psychosocial variables

This study was conducted to determine whether energy level can be used to distinguish depressed from nondepressed individuals and to assess the relative importance of energy level and psychosocial variables in making this distinction. Fifty-seven participants experiencing a current episode of major depression and a matched sample of nondepressed participants completed a self-report questionnaire containing measures of energy level and psychosocial variables. Discriminant analysis revealed that energy level correctly classified 93% as depressed or nondepressed, whereas psychosocial variables correctly classified 87%. Combining the energy and psychosocial variables did not increase the accuracy of classification over that achieved by using only the energy measures. The measure of exhaustion provided the greatest relative contribution to the overall discriminant function.