Browsing by Author "Malkki, Veera"

Aim. Measuring depression is often based on calculating sum scores of symptoms in which case the effectiveness of treatment is evaluated on the basis of the change in the sum scores. However, as a result of calculating the sum scores, data about symptoms is lost. Despite the mitigation of depression symptoms, functional deficiencies are common and therefore psychosocial functioning should also be measured when evaluating the effectiveness of treatment. The aim of this study is to determine whether individual depressive symptoms, regardless of diagnosis, predict the observed change in psychoso-cial function, while simultaneously considering the effect of total depression scores. In addition, it was sought to deter-mine whether individual changes in symptoms predict a change in psychosocial function when comparing subjects with a clinically significant improvement in psychosocial function with those with less change. Methodology. The data of the study (n = 214) comes from the psychotherapy quality-control register of HUS Psychiatry, where data collection is integrated into the psychotherapy process. The effects of changes in symptoms and depression sum scores on psychosocial functioning were studied using linear regression models and MIMIC-models. The clinical significance of changes in psychosocial functioning was predicted by logistic regression analyzes. Results and Conclusions. In regression models describing the association between symptom changes and psychosocial functioning, age, gender, diagnosis, or psychotherapy were not significant predictors. The connection of symptomatic changes with the observed change in psychosocial functioning did not depend on whether the person was diagnosed with depression or some other mental disorder. Of the depressive symptoms, only self-dissatisfaction or experiences of failure was associated with a change in psychosocial function (beta = -0.25, p-value = .003), while simultaneously taking into account the change in overall depression. Based on the results, self-dissatisfaction can predict a change in psychosocial function regardless of overall depression, which is why self-reported dissatisfaction appears to be an important symptom predictive of the effectiveness of short-term psychotherapy in general psychiatric patients.