ABSTRACT
Of all the psychiatric disorders, depression is by far the most common. Each year, more than 100 million people worldwide develop clinically recognizable depression. During the course of a lifetime, it is estimated that between 8% and 18% of the general population will experience at least one clinically significant episode of depression (Karno et al., 1987), and that approximately twice as many women than men will be affected by this disorder (Frank, Carpenter, & Kupfer, 1988). Moreover, for a significant proportion of these individuals, the depressive episode will result in death by suicide (Hirschfeld & Goodwin, 1988) or other causes (cf. Murphy, Monson, Olivier, Sobol, & Leighton, 1988).
