The Limited Utility of the Dexamethasone Suppression Test for the Diagnostic Process in Psychiatry

This paper presents data on DST from 3 consecutive studies of 231 psychiatric in-patients & from 3 studies of 75 healthy subjects. These studies focused on whether the DST discriminates patients with specifically endogenous depression from those with other psychiatric illnesses or from healthy controls. These tests did not significantly separate endogenous depressed patients from other psychiatric disorders but showed that certain variables enhance abnormal DST rates in psychiatric patients.