Operational diagnosis of endogenous depression. II. Comparison of 8 different operational diagnoses.

The comparison of 8 different operational diagnoses (OPD) of endogenous depression in a group of 173 inpatients with operationally diagnosed depressive syndromes shows a rather low agreement between the different diagnoses. Whereas in most comparisons there is a significant association between the different diagnoses (chi 2) the chance-corrected agreement is poor (kappa less than 0.50) in nearly all comparisons. These values cannot guarantee a comparability of results found in patient samples which are diagnosed as endogenous depressions by different OPD. The simultaneous application of competing OPD (polydiagnosis) seems to be an approach suited to overcome this problem and allow comparability of research results of endogenously depressed patient samples.