ArticleNature reviews. Psychology2022
Revisiting the theoretical and methodological foundations of depression measurement.
Article in Nature reviews. Psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 124 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
124 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- What is being measured by formal thought disorder scales? An item-level content analysis.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Self-reports vs clinician ratings of efficacies of psychotherapies for depression: a meta-analysis of randomized trials.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2025Pooled it
- The Relation Between Passively Collected GPS Mobility Metrics and Depressive Symptoms: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Enduring effects of psychotherapy, antidepressants and their combination for depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- How to measure mental pain: a systematic review assessing measures of mental pain.Evidence-based mental health · 2022Pooled it
- A common symptom geometry of mood improvement under sertraline and placebo associated with distinct neural patterns.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- The effect of attentional bias modification on positive affect dynamics.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- A Comparison of Post-Traumatic Stress and Depressive Symptoms by Suicidal Ideation Among Black Transgender Women.Research in nursing & health · 2026Article
- Contra-Hedonic Functions of Self-Destructive Behaviors in Adolescents.The International journal of eating disorders · 2026Article
- Ability to detect depression in ethnic minority groups: a UK Biobank cohort study.BMJ mental health · 2026Article
- A generalizable computational framework for integrating heterogeneous biomarkers into interpretable scalar risk representations.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- Targeting mechanisms of change as a path to precision psychotherapy for community settings.Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research · 2026Article
- Generative psychometrics via AI-GENIE: Automatic item generation and validation with network-integrated evaluation.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- The functional neurobiology of dispositions towards negative emotions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Blunted anticipation, but not consummation, of food rewards in depression.Cell reports. Medicine · 2026Article
- Beyond Depression: Does the CES-D 8 Capture Subjective Well-Being?Assessment · 2026Article
- Depression patient-friendly formulation containing escitalopram and ascorbic acid: design, optimization, characterization, and in vivo taste assessment.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) in the Dominican Republic.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Decisional reference point pathology: A cognitive mechanism for and a correlate of major depressive disorder in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
64 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Depressive disorders are among the leading causes of global disease burden, but there has been limited progress in understanding the causes and treatments for these disorders. In this Perspective, we suggest that such progress crucially depends on our ability to measure depression. We review the many problems with depression measurement, including limited evidence of validity and reliability. These issues raise grave concerns about common uses of depression measures, such as diagnosis or tracking treatment progress. We argue that shortcomings arise because depression measurement rests on shaky methodological and theoretical foundations. Moving forward, we need to break with the field's tradition that has, for decades, divorced theories about depression from how we measure it. Instead, we suggest that epistemic iteration, an iterative exchange between theory and measurement, provides a crucial avenue for depression measurement to progress.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.