Neural network subtyping of depression

To examine the applicability of a neural network classification strategy to examine the independent contribution of psychomotor disturbance (PMD) and endogeneity symptoms to the DSM-III-R definition of melancholia.

We studied 407 depressed patients with the clinical dataset comprising 17 endogeneity symptoms and the 18-item CORE measure of behaviourally rated PMD. A multilayer perception neural network was used to fit non-linear models of varying complexity. A linear discriminant function analysis was also used to generate a model for comparison with the non-linear models.

Models (linear and non-linear) using PMD items only and endogeneity symptoms only had similar rates of successful classification, while non-linear models combining both PMD and symptoms scores achieved the best classifications.

Our current non-linear model was superior to a linear analysis, a finding which may have wider application to psychiatric classification. Our non-linear analysis of depressive subtypes supports the binary view that melancholic and non-melancholic depression are separate clinical disorders rather than different forms of the same entity. This study illustrates how non-linear modelling with neural networks is a potentially fruitful approach to the study of the diagnostic taxonomy of psychiatric disorders and to clinical decision-making.