Seminal · article · 2012

Screening for depressed mood in an adolescent psychiatric context by brief self-assessment scales – testing psychometric validity of WHO-5 and BDI-6 indices by latent trait analyses

Eva Henje; Per Bech; Göran Högberg; Jan‐Olov Larsson; Eva Serlachius

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder is prevalent in the adolescent psychiatric clinical setting and often comorbid with other primary psychiatric diagnoses such as ADHD or social anxiety disorder. Systematic manual-based diagnostic procedures are recommended to identify such comorbidity but they are time-consuming and often not fully implemented in clinical practice. Screening for depressive symptoms in the child psychiatric context using brief, user-friendly and easily managed self-assessment scales may be of clinical value and utility. The aim of the study is to test the psychometric validity of two such scales, which may be used in a two-step screening procedure, the WHO-Five Well-being Index (WHO-5) and the six-item version of Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI-6). METHOD: 66 adolescent psychiatric patients with a clinical diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD), 60 girls and 6 ...