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Although irritable mood in children and adolescents can replace depressed mood as a DSM-5 central criterion of major depressive disorder (MDD), irritable mood is not described as a feature of MDD in adults. However, irritability, reported to co-occur in 40% to 50% of depressed adults, is associated with worse depressive and anxious symptoms and clinical course. To examine the utility of adding irritability to the assessment and measurement of depression during antidepressant treatment, researchers modeled data from a randomized, controlled, multisite antidepressant study of 664 patients with MDD (67% women, 69% white).
The irritability measure comprised five items: “I wish people would just leave me alone,” “I feel very uptight,” “I find mys…