443 patients (21-74 yrs old) with a physical illness (355 with coronary heart disease and 88 with chronic pain), 150 unemployed persons (18-63 yrs old) and 623 people (30-59 yrs old) from the normal population in Jamtland, Sweden were tested using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The aim of the study was to investigate whether scores on the physical and non-physical components of the BDI differed between patients and other groups, or if only the physical component was significantly higher in the patient group, and if that could be interpreted as symptomatic of physical disease and not of depression. The patients' scores were significantly higher than those of the other 2 groups on the physical component but only higher than the normal population sample on the non-physical component. This supports the idea that the items for physical symptoms in the BDI might be confounding when determining depression in patients with physical diseases. The non-physical component seems to be the best indicator of depression.