Depression screening instruments made good severity measures in a cross-sectional analysis (original) (raw)
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Journal of Affective Disorders, 2004
Background: The aim of this study was to compare the validity of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the WHO (five) Well Being Index (WBI-5), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), and physicians' recognition of depressive disorders, and to recommend specific cut-off points for clinical decision making. Methods: A total of 501 outpatients completed each of the three depression screening questionnaires and received the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) as the criterion standard. In addition, treating physicians were asked to give their psychiatric diagnoses. Criterion validity and Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) were determined. Areas under the curves (AUCs) were compared statistically. Results: All depression scales showed excellent internal consistencies (Cronbach's a: 0.85 -0.90). For 'major depressive disorder', the operating characteristics of the PHQ were significantly superior to both the HADS and the WBI-5. For 'any depressive disorder', the PHQ showed again the best operating characteristics but the overall difference did not reach statistical significance at the 5% level. Cut-off points that can be recommended for the screening of 'major depressive disorder' had sensitivities of 98% (PHQ), 94% (WBI-5), and 85% (HADS). Corresponding specificities were 80% (PHQ), 78% (WBI-5), and 76% (HADS). In contrast, physicians' recognition of 'major depressive disorder' was poor (sensitivity, 40%; specificity, 87%). Limitations: Our sample may not be representative of medical outpatients, but sensitivity and specificity are independent of disorder prevalence. Conclusions: All three questionnaires performed well in depression screening, but significant differences in criterion validity existed. These results may be helpful in the selection of questionnaires and cut-off points. D
Screening for Depression in Primary Care Clinics: The CES-D and the BDI
The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 1990
The present study was undertaken to examine the utility of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) as screening instruments for primary care clinic patients. We examined: 1) patients' willingness to complete the scales; 2) the level of agreement between the screening instruments and DSM-III diagnosis of Major Depressive Episode, based on the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS); 3) the effect on detection rates of raising the cut-off score for each depression screen; and 4) the factor structure of the CES-D in our primary care sample versus findings from general population studies. The CES-D and BDI performed comparably as depression screening instruments. Both produced too many false positives when standard (low) cut-off scores were applied. However, when stringent cut-off scores were used, results suggested that either the CES-D or BDI might assist physicians in reliably detecting depressed patients, without a...
The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 1998
Objective: It is estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of primary care patients meet criteria for Major Depressive Disorder with an additional 10 percent to 30 percent experiencing significant subclinical depression. However, only 18 percent to 50 percent of depressed primary care patients are so diagnosed by their primary care physicians and even fewer receive professional mental health care. The current study proposes a quick and efficient means to assist physicians in determining for which patients the resource intensive process of thoroughly screening for depression should be engaged. Method: The present study examined responses of 358 consecutively reporting patients to a midwest university-based primary care clinic on the Beck Depression Inventory. Results: Among individuals reporting high levels of depressive symptomatology, five questions from the Beck Depression Inventory were endorsed by 90 percent or greater of the participants. Analyses by gender indicated that while the same five items were endorsed by males and females, three additional items were frequently endorsed by males. Conclusions: These findings suggest that a means for efficiently identifying individuals who warrant screening for depression may be readily available to primary care physicians. Surprisingly, this screening was found to emphasize psychological rather than vegetative symptoms. Thus, attending to these symptoms and/or complaints *A portion of this article was presented at the A M M~ Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, 1994.
Screening for depression in primary care: Will one or two items suffice?
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 2004
■ Abstract Small differences in implementation of screening and the associated burden on clinicians and patients could have substantial effects on the sustainability of screening in routine primary care. Therefore, we investigated the psychometric properties of single items and two-item combinations of the "WHO-5 Well Being Index" (WHO-5) and compared the obtained characteristics to those of the original version as well as to another proposed two-item screener (developed from PRIME-MD and BPHQ, respectively).
Assessing the performance of a new depression screener for primary care (PC-SAD©)
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2002
As many as 50% of patients with major depression seen in primary care settings are not diagnosed. To facilitate efficient identification of primary care patients with depression, we developed a new patient-administered depression screening instrument (PC-SAD©) that produces a DSM-IV diagnosis, and compared its performance to other screeners that yield DSM-IV diagnoses. To assess validity, the diagnostic accuracy of the PC-SAD was compared with the Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD) and the PRIME-MD-PHQ (PHQ) in a convenience sample (N ϭ 312) of health plan members, primary care outpatients, and psychiatric patients (with diagnoses). The screeners were compared with each other and with psychiatric diagnoses to assess their relative performance. Disagreement among the three screeners was formally tested using a triangulation approach that incorporates a statistical likelihood model. Of patients diagnosed as depressed using the IDD, 84.2% were also depressed by the PC-SAD (sensitivity). Of patients not diagnosed as depressed by the IDD, 94.7% were not depressed by the PC-SAD (specificity). Using the triangulation method the sensitivities were 87.2% (PC-SAD), 88.4% (IDD), and 60.7% (PHQ). The specificities were 95.0% (PC-SAD), 92.7% (IDD), and 98.3% (PHQ). The performance of the PC-SAD and the IDD was comparable. The PHQ was less sensitive than either of those. The PC-SAD respondent burden strikes a balance between the very short PHQ, and the longer IDD, and has the lowest (easiest) Flesch-Kincaid reading level. Investigators, clinicians, and health plans that want a DSM-IV-based depression screener can choose from among these three instruments, with known tradeoffs in sensitivity, respondent burden, and readability.
Assessing validity of a depression screening instrument in the absence of a gold standard
Annals of Epidemiology, 2014
Background-We evaluated the extent to which use of a hypothesized imperfect gold standard, the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), biases the estimates of diagnostic accuracy of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). We also evaluate how statistical correction can be used to address this bias. Methods-The study was conducted among 926 adults where structured interviews were conducted to collect information about participants' current major depressive disorder (MDD) using PHQ-9 and CIDI instruments. First, we evaluated the relative psychometric properties of PHQ-9 using CIDI as a gold standard. Next, we employed a Bayesian latent-class model to correct for the bias. Results-In comparison with CIDI, the relative sensitivity and specificity of the PHQ-9 for detecting MDD at a cut point of ≥10 were 53.1% (95%CI: 45.4-60.8%) and 77.5% (95%CI: 74.5-80.5%), respectively. Using a Bayesian latent-class model to correct for the bias arising from the use of an imperfect gold standard increased the sensitivity and specificity of PHQ-9 to 79.8% (95% Bayesian credible interval (BCI): 64.9-90.8%) and 79.1% (95%BCI:74.7-83.7%), respectively
General Hospital Psychiatry, 2009
Recent epidemiologic studies have found that most patients with mental illness are seen exclusively in primary care medicine. These patients often present with medically unexplained somatic symptoms and utilize at least twice as many health care visits as controls. There has been an exponential growth in studies in this interface between primary care and psychiatry in the last 10 years. This special section, edited by Jürgen Unutzer, M.D., will publish informative research articles that address primary care-psychiatric issues.
General Hospital Psychiatry, 2004
Heterogeneity of performance of screening tools in different patient groups has rarely been considered in the literature on depression screening in primary care. The objectives of the present study were to assess and to compare diagnostic accuracy of three screening questionnaires (Brief Patient Health Questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire-12, WHO-5) in identifying depression across various patient subpopulations and to assess the accuracy of the unaided clinical assessment of primary care physicians in the same subgroups. We conducted a cross-sectional validation study in 448 primary care patients. Two-by-two tables as well as receiver operating characteristics were applied. Results indicated that diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity, specificity) of the three screening instruments as well as of the clinical diagnoses differed in the various patient groups. Superiority of one screening tool over the other depends on the subgroup considered. Gender, age, form (subtype), and severity of depression influence the test characteristics of a screening tool. This should be considered if routine depression screening should be widely introduced. Of course, the benefit of routine screening also depends on efforts made for treatment and monitoring of patients in whom depression was diagnosed.