Abstract
The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) was originally derived on inpatients, and most of Max Hamilton’s own studies were conducted on such patients. Depressed inpatients are relatively severely ill, and more likely to show psychotic or endogenous symptom patterns (Paykel et al. 1970). There are dangers in assuming that rating scales will behave with adequate reliability and validity in samples different to those in which they were developed. Very many outpatient studies have since used the scale and it does appear to retain its useful characteristics in these somewhat less severely ill samples.
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References
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Paykel, E.S. (1990). Use of the Hamilton Depression Scale in General Practice. In: Bech, P., Coppen, A. (eds) The Hamilton Scales. Psychopharmacology Series, vol 9. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75373-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75373-2_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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