Rating scales for depression

A depression rating scale is a psychometric instrument (tool), usually a questionnaire whose wording has been validated with experimental evidence, having descriptive words and phrases that indicate the severity of depression for a time period.^[1] When used, an observer may make judgements and rate a person at a specified scale level with respect to identified characteristics. Rather than being used to diagnose depression, a depression rating scale may be used to assign a score to a person's behaviour where that score may be used to determine whether that person should be evaluated more thoroughly for a depressive disorder diagnosis.^[1] Several rating scales are used for this purpose.^[1]

Scales completed by clinicians, researchers, and workers

Some depression rating scales are completed by clinicians or researchers. The

Some depression rating scales are completed by patients. The

The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) is another self-administered scale, but in this case it is used for older patients, and for patients with mild to moderate dementia. Instead of presenting a five-category response set, the GDS questions are answered with a simple "yes" or "no".^[13][14] The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale is similar to the Geriatric Depression Scale in that the answers are preformatted. In the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, there are 20 items: ten positively worded and ten negatively worded. Each question is rated on a scale of 1 through 4 based on four possible answers: "a little of the time", "some of the time", "good part of the time", and "most of the time".^[15]

The

The Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD) is completed by the patient and a researcher. This depression rating scale includes a 27-item screening questionnaire and follow-up clinician interview designed to facilitate the diagnosis of common mental disorders in primary care. Its lengthy administration time has limited its clinical usefulness; it has been replaced by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).^[16]

Usefulness

The Beck Depression Inventory is copyrighted, a fee must be paid for each copy used, and photocopying it is a violation of copyright. There is no evidence that the BDI-II is more valid or reliable than other depression scales,^[20] and public domain scales such as the Major Depression Inventory, the revised Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-R), the Zung Depression scale and Patient Health Questionnaire – Nine Item (PHQ-9) have been studied as a useful tools.^[21][22][23]

Other copyrighted scales allow individual clinicians and researchers to make copies for their own use, but require licenses for electronic versions or large-scale redistribution.

List of depression rating scales

• Beck Depression Inventory (BDI, BDI-1A, BDI-II),^[24] there is a fee to use the BDI.
• Beck Hopelessness Scale,^[25] there is a fee to use the scale.
• Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS-SF)
• Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS)
• Children's Depression Inventory (CDI)
• Children's Depression Rating Scale (CDRS)
• Clinically Useful Depression Outcome Scale (CUDOS)^{[26]: 138 [27]}
• Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS)
• Depression and Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS)
• Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children
• Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale
• General Health Questionnaire
• Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)
• Hamilton Rating Scale (HRSDD, HDRS, Ham-D)
• HEADS-ED, used in hospital emergency departments
• Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale
• Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS)^[28]
• Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale (KADS-11)
• Major Depression Inventory (MDI)
• Montgomery-Asberg Depression Scale (MADRS)
• Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ)^[29]
• Occupational Depression Inventory^[30][31] No charge to researchers & practitioners
• Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).^[32] Nine-item depression symptom scale keyed to the nine DSM-5 symptoms of major depression.
• Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD)
• Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms (QIDS)^[33][28]
• Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology Clinician (QIDS-C)
• Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology Self Report (QIDS-SR)

Questions regarding the validity of depression rating scales

Several research articles have come out in the past several years that investigate the validity of sum-score rating scales for depression.

Bianchi, R., Verkuilen, J., Toker, S., Schonfeld, I. S., Gerber, M., Brähler, E., & Kroenke, K. (2022). Is the PHQ-9 a unidimensional measure of depression? A 58,272-participant study. Psychological Assessment, 34, 595–603. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0001124

Fried, E. I. (2017). The 52 symptoms of major depression: Lack of content overlap among seven common depression scales. Journal of Affective Disorders, 208, 191–197. [1]

Santor, D. A., Gregus, M., & Welch, A. (2006). Eight decades of measurement in depression. Measurement, 4(3), 135–155.

See also

• Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale
  (CES-D)
• Diagnostic classification and rating scales used in psychiatry
• Goldberg test
• Psychological symptom scales

References