Depression subtyping in PTSD patients

A Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV (SCID) and psychological testing were administered to 260 combat veterans in order to investigate the relationship between symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and melancholic features of depression. Sixty-seven percent of PTSD patients experiencing comorbid major depression acknowledged symptoms indicative of a melancholic-depression subtype. Correlational and regression analyses show that the presence of melancholic features is related to severity of emotional-numbing experienced by the PTSD patients. These results suggest PTSD patients are likely to experience depressive episodes phenomenologically similar to melancholic-depression. It is likely that acknowledgment of melancholic symptoms is due to (a) the inclusion of guilt as a melancholic feature, and (b) the similarities between emotional numbing symptoms and other melancholic features.