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Analysis With the Life Table

Martin B. Keller, MD; Robert W. Shapiro, MD; Philip W. Lavori, PhD; Nicola Wolfe

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1982;39(8):911-915.

Abstract
• With the use of life tables to describe time while patients were well and subsequent rates of relapse for 75 patients after their recovery from an episode of major depressive disorder in a naturalistic study, a high risk of relapse was detected shortly after recovery. Twenty-four percent of patients relapsed within 12 weeks at risk, and 12% of patients relapsed within four weeks at risk. The presence of an underlying chronic depression and three or more previous affective episodes predicted a statistically significant increase in the rate of relapse. These data were used to develop an exponential model of relapse probability for a subgroup of the study population.

Author Affiliations
From the Collaborative Program on the Psychohiology of Depression, Clini Research Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md. Dr Keller and Ms Wolfe are at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Dr Lavori is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Aug 19, 1981.

Dr Shapiro died in October 1980.

Reprint requests to Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114 (Dr Keller).

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