New Version of Brief Depression Scale

To the Editor: Screening for depression among medically ill older populations has received a good deal of attention in the literature.1–3 We recently developed a brief 11-item depression scale to be used for detecting major depression in medically ill patients.4 We have found that changing the wording of the questions to first person and changing statements to the past tense has improved the acceptability of the scale to patients and made it easier to administer. Because of the change in wording, we were concerned that the validity of the scale might change; thus, we conducted a small study to validate the new scale with the original one. Both the new scale (below) and the original scale were administered to a sample of 30 adults aged 50 or older, many with physical health problems; 75% of the sample were women. All scored 13 or higher on the 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale, and all met DSM-III-R criteria for a diagnosis of major depression. Both scales were administered at the same sitting; the original scale was administered first. The average score achieved by this group on the original scale was 5.1 (SD 3.1) and on the new scale was 4.9 (SD 2.9). Note that in the original validation study, scores of 3 or higher were 83% sensitive and 77% specific for major depression. The Pearson correlation between the total scores on the original and the new scale was 0.89. The new scale items and the individual item correlations with corresponding items on the original scale are listed above (Table 1).