Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 12, No. 5, 1988,pp. 459-469 Levels of Hopelessness in DSM-III Disorders: A Partial Test of Content Specificity in Depression ~ Aaron T. Beck 2 University of Pennsylvania John H. Riskind George Mason University Gary Brown University of Pennsylvania Robert A. Steer University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey To determine the extent to which negativity about the future is specific to depression, the Hopelessness Scale (HS) scores of 199patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) were compared with those of 48 patients diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 76 psychiatric pa- tients with mixed nonaffective, nonanxiety disorders. As predicted by the cognitive model, the MDD patients had higher mean HS scores than either the GAD or control patients. In addition, HS scores were more highly cor- related with clinician-rated and self-report measures of depression than with measures of anxiety. Further, the positive relationships between the HS and measures of anxiety dropped to nonsignificant levels after the correspond- ing measures of depression were controlled for, while the HS remained cor- related with depression after controlling for level of anxiety. The results were ~This study, from the Foundation for Cognitive Therapy, was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH38843 to Dr. Beck. 2Address all correspondence to Aaron T. Beck, M. D., Center for Cognitive Therapy, Room 602, 133 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104. 459 0147-5916/88/1000-0459506.00/0 © 1988 Plenum Publishing Corporation