Long-Term Outcome of Major Depressive Disorder in Psychiatric Patients Is Variable

The prevailing view of outcome of major depressive disorder (MDD), based on mostly inpatient cohorts sampled from tertiary centers, emphasizes chronicity and frequent recurrences. We investigated the long-term outcome of a regionally representative psychiatric MDD cohort comprising mainly outpatients.The Vantaa Depression Study included 163 patients with DSM-IV MDD (71.5% of those eligible) diagnosed using structured and semistructured...