In this study prognoses about the posthospital vocational achievement behavior of 55 first admitted depressive patients were made at the time of discharge. With a structured and standardized questionnaire the patients themselves, the treating physicians, and the nurses were interviewed. As a first step of analysis the prognoses of the three groups were compared with each other and tested in respect of differences. This comparison was made with other psychiatric diagnoses too, whereby endogenic depressive patients and neurotic depressive patients were discriminated. In the second step of analysis the prognoses of the three ‘rater groups’ were compared with the real vocational reintegration of 1 year after discharge. The result was that the prognoses of the treating physicians and the nurses were more compatible with reality than those of the patients themselves.