Across the longitudinal disease courses, noticeabledifferences exist between the reported perceptions of patientswith MDD and healthcare providers regarding symptom,functionality and treatment priority. Patients report morefrequently mood, physical, and cognitive symptoms and greaterimpact on psychosocial functioning than healthcare providersin the postacute and remission phases. They also give highemphasis on addressing psychosocial functioning impairmentearly in the disease course. In the postacute and remissionphases, a greater percentage of patients report severe difficultiesin domains such as autonomy, cognitive functioning, financialissues, interpersonal relationships, and leisure time. Thediscrepancy between the perceptions between depressedpatients and healthcare providers underscores the critical needto establish clinically meaningful assessments and goals forfunctionality and to determine predictors of functional responsein subgroups of depressed patients based on symptomaticphenotype and functional impairment which may not beidentical as those predictors of symptomatic remission.