Diagnostic policies of minor depressive illness by two differently trained groups of general practitioners

Two homogeneous general practitioner groups were differently trained for approaching minor depressive illness. One group was presented the depression problem in a traditional manner while the other was led to particularly emphasize the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, according to Balint's suggestions. Both groups adopted the same case record form. The structural analysis of diagnostic judgement based on the logistic transformation of recorded data made it possible to evidence several qualitative differences between the groups, probably deriving from the different training.