Browsing by Author "Suominen, Elina"

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether changes in functional ability (psychosocial functional ability, work ability and self-assessed cognitive ability) among employed rehabilitees of a rehabilitation course for depression could predict the severity level of depressive symptoms at the end of the course. The sample (n = 209) was drawn from the AMI project of The Social Insurance Institution of Finland. The project consisted an individual and group-based outpatient depression rehabilitation course for employed persons. Logistic regression models were used to analyze how changes in the three dimensions of functional ability predicted the severity of depressive symptoms at the end of the rehabilitation course. The more the work ability and the self-assessed cognitive ability improved, the smaller was the probability for having clinically significant depressive symptoms at the end of the course. The change in psychosocial functioning did not predict the severity level of depressive symptoms at the end of the course, even though the association was nearly statistically significant. The present study suggests that a group-based, outpatient depression rehabilitation course is effective in rehabilitating work ability and self-assessed cognitive ability of depressed employees. Moreover, the study supports the idea that functional ability is an important aspect of remission from depression and that it should be further examined in future research. Particularly the psychosocial functioning of the employed rehabilitees with depression needs further research. The study suggests that different aspects of functional ability might be differently related to depression in the end of an intervention aiming at reducing depression. This supports the idea that future studies should examine functional ability holistically with several different measures.