Self-rating procedures in the evaluation of antidepressants.

Self-ratings are very practical and economical procedures to measure the severity of depression in intraindividual comparisons. They are sensitive to change induced by therapy and provide findings concerning the global result of therapy and its time course, which are similar to data based on ratings by psychiatrists. Due to their practicability, self-rating procedures contribute to an exact description of the time course of depression in multiple measurement designs. However, the limitations of the validity of self-rating procedures should not be neglected.