Before studying the effectiveness of amitriptyline in alleviating the pain of diabetic neuropathy, this study was designed to compare the severity and nature of depressive symtoms of diabetic patients with neuropathy with those of diabetic patients without neuropathy and patients with somatoform disorder whose complaints were mainly somatic pain, respectively. The authors administered Beck Depression Inventory(BDI) to the three groups of patients. The mean total scores of BDI were relatively low in all groups and not significantly different among the three groups. The mean scores of four subscales of BDI were also not significantly different among the three groups. These results might suggest that the pain of diabetic neuropathy did not influence on the severity and the nature of depressive symptoms of preexisting diabetes.