Abstract
The efficacy of medical treatments is evidenced by a demonstrated reduction in the severity of the disorder being treated relative to a control condition. At the beginning of the era of psychopharmacology, in the late 1950s, neither a well-defined concept nor a well-defined measurement of the severity of depression, schizophrenia, or anxiety disorders were available. Consequently, it was difficult to compare groups of treated patients on the basis of treatment-specific rates of recovery. Hamilton was one of the first to recognize this lack and to create methods for standardizing the measurement of the effects of drugs across both patients and treatments. His idea was that a standardized measurement of the effects of drugs should be quantitative and specific for the various diagnostic categories.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Maier, W. (1990). The Hamilton Depression Scale and Its Alternatives: A Comparison of Their Reliability and Validity. 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_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75373-2_8
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