A gas-liquid chromatographic procedure employing an alkali flame ionization detector (GLC-AFID) for the quantitation of imipramine and its major active metabolite, desipramine, in plasma was developed. This method validated a previously reported radioimmunoassay for imipramine and desipramine. The GLC-AFID method was also compared with a GLC-mass spectrometric procedure which employed selected ion monitoring (GLC/MS-SIM) in which specific ions for imipramine and desipramine were monitored. The two methods using gas chromatographic separation were shown to be suitable for therapeutic monitoring of these drugs in patients. The direct immunoassay, which measures the total imipramine plus desipramine, is very useful when large numbers of samples are to be analysed rapidly and it compares favorably with the other two analytical procedures.