Depressed and non-depressed chronic pain patients.

A comparison between 102 depressed and 101 non-depressed pain patients, identified with the use of DSM-III criteria, showed that depressed patients were more often elderly and employed as compared to non-depressed patients who were significantly more often found to be younger (P less than 0.001) and were students (P less than 0.02). No other demographic differences were observed. Family psychiatric morbidity as well as family history of depressive spectrum disorders were noted in both the groups, without much difference. The relevance of classifying pain patients on the basis of their predominant psychopathology is discussed.