Grading depression severity by symptom scores: is it a valid method for subclassifying depressive disorders?
Recent diagnostic criteria such as the DSM-III-R and the 10th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) have proposed that depression should be subcategorized according to severity. Among 75 inpatients with Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) major depressive disorder, the total number of criterion B items (N = 8) used as the measure of severity was validated against the global assessment scale (GAS) score for the worst week of the episode; the correlation between the two was r = -.232. This suggests that even if the total number of identified diagnostic items reflects a different aspect of severity, there should be caution about its use unless validated by further study.
Kitamura
T
T
National Institute of Mental Health, Ichikawa, Japan.
Nakagawa
Y
Y
Machizawa
S
S
D000328:Adult; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index