Social adjustment in in-patients with affective disorders: predictive factors

We assessed social adjustment in 145 depressed in-patients using the self-reporting Social Adjustment Scale (42-item version) to evaluate the contribution of demographic and clinical variables and examine social functioning at different levels of depression. Our results indicate that the presence of a psychopathology in association with interpersonal sensitivity, hostility and perceived social support aspects — and not the severity of current depressive symptoms — were the most important factors affecting social adjustment. As expected, social disturbances are more pronounced in severe depressives who experience difficulties in all areas: by contrast, patients with low depressive symptom levels do not appear to be maladjusted, by comparison with a community sample.