In a follow-up study of one hundred fifty women who had undergone treatment on an outpatient basis for acute depression, it was found that the most important predictor of their long-term clinical outcome (eight, twenty and forty-eight months after the acute episode) was personality as measured by the Neuroticism Scale of the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI-N). Age, race, social class, marital status, religion, number of previous depression or suicide attempts, diagnosis, history of early deaths of or separations from significant others, history of neurotic traits as a child, amount and type of stress in the six months before onset, and severity and pattern of pretreatment symptoms were not predictive of outcome.