The importance of psychotic features to major depression: course and outcome during a 2-year follow-up.

Despite substantially greater levels of impairment during the five years preceding intake to this study, patients with nonbipolar psychotic depression (n = 55) were as likely to recover as were patients with nonpsychotic depression (n = 451) during a 2-year follow-up. Though patients with psychotic depression were more psychosocially impaired at 6 months, these differences resolved during the ensuing 18 months. In replication of an earlier study, early outcome was more predictive of later outcome in psychotic patients than it was in nonpsychotic patients.