Lifetime Patterns of Depressive Symptoms in the Community and Among Primary Care Attenders: an Application of Membership Analysis

The objective of this study was to describe empirical & natural lifetime patterns of depressive & anxiety symptoms reported by community respondents & primary care attenders. The Grade of Membership model was used to analyze data collected from 716 subjects between 18 & 64 years of age with a lifetime diagnosis of DIS/DSM-III-R Major Depressive Episode. Symptoms of depression, mania & anxiety were processed. Six prototype categories are presented which provided the best description of the structure of symptoms included in the analysis. (21 refs)