Summary
Doxepin and diazepam were evaluated for therapeutic effectiveness in a double blind study carried out with 69 primarily anxious neurotic outpatients attending either a municipal hospital clinic or a general practitioner's office.
Doxepin produced more clinical improvement than diazepam in several questionnaire clusters measuring depressive symptomatology, but not in clusters measuring anxious symptomatology.
According to several outcome criteria, doxepin tended to produce more clinical improvement in general practice than in clinic patients, while diazepam produced either equal improvement in both populations or slightly more improvement in the clinic.
Possibly contributing to the present results are low daily dosage of diazepam, differential pharmacological drug effects, population differences in levels of anxiety and depression, and differences in population characteristics, primarily as related to social class.
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This work was supported by USPHS Grants MH-08957-8 and by Pfizer Laboratories, who provided all medications. The authors wish to thank Miss Reita Brandt and Mrs. Jane Eveland for carrying out the computer analyses, and Mr. Peter Hesbacher for coordinating the data collection phase.
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Rickels, K., Perloff, M., Stepansky, W. et al. Doxepin and diazepam in general practice and hospital clinic neurotic patients: A collaborative controlled study. Psychopharmacologia 15, 265–279 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401681
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401681