Posted by chumbawumba on May 12, 2009, at 1:46:50
In reply to Re: Antidepressants Hardly Help ????????? » chumbawumba, posted by SLS on May 12, 2009, at 0:26:33
What does it really matter if you give a really detailed psychometric intrument to people. Lets say you give them the MMPI, which I think is the most researched psychometric intrument on the planet. And you look at the Depression and Mania subscales. And a person comes out with an 80 T score on the former and a 20 T score on the latter. That's three standard deviations from the mean on both. That would be highly indicative of depression.
What have you proved? Essentially you have shown that this person has a similar profile as other people who had been somehow magically determined to be truly depressed whose answers were therefore suitable for to be used in the construction of the MMPI subscales. Thus the "empirical basis" of the MMPI. Fine, essentially you've shown that people who fall into some category called "Depression" give similar answers on a test. There is nothing in this that would suggest people who match this profile have a more "biologically based" illness. And that's the state of the art, the most widely researched psychometric intrument on the planet with over 500 questions is basically telling you that birds of a feather flock together. And maybe some information like atypical features, or psychotic. But again there is nothing here that would inform a selection criteria for a clinical study vis a vis "biologically based" depression (which it all is anyway).
So why not just ask "How are you doing?"
poster:chumbawumba
thread:895119
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090505/msgs/895323.html