title: A brief self-report depression measure assessing mood state and social impairment.
abstract: Many measures of depression severity appear confounded by including depressive sub-typing features. We report the design of a brief (11 item) self-report scale of depression severity (the AUSSI), assessing both mood state and social impairment domains, and designed to be independent of sub-typing features. Mood severity and functional impairment scores demonstrated some independence in a sample of 360 patients. Patients with a 'melancholic' depressive type (categorised by four differing systems) differed from residual 'non-melancholic' depressed patients by having higher impairment scores, but the assigned groups did not differ, in the main, by mood severity scores. Advantages of the measure are summarised.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hadzi-Pavlovic
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sengoz
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Boyce
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wilhelm
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Hickie
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Brodaty
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012649:Self Concept; D012919:Social Behavior; D012931:Social Environment