The development of the Brief Edinburgh Depression Scale (BEDS) to screen for depression in patients with advanced cancer.
BACKGROUND
The development of a brief valid tool to screen for depression in patients with advanced cancer is important. This paper reports data on the psychometric properties of the Brief Edinburgh Depression Scale.


METHODS
Two hundred and forty six patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria completed the 10-item EDS and Present State Examination.


RESULTS
Factor extraction revealed 6 items from the ten item EDS. The most valid cut off for defining a case, using the PSE diagnosis as the "gold-standard", was a score of 6 out of 18 on the Brief Edinburgh Depression Scale which gave a sensitivity of 72% and specificity of 83% with a PPV of 65.1% and NPV of 87.1%.


CONCLUSIONS
The six item EDS is a brief and sensitive method of screening for depression in advanced cancer patients--this novel use of the Edinburgh depression scale may have a significant impact on the assessment and thus management of this distressing symptom.
Lloyd-Williams
Mari
M
Academic Palliative and Supportive Care Studies Group, Division of Primary Care, School of population, community and behavioural sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GB. mlw@liv.ac.uk
Shiels
Chris
C
Dowrick
Chris
C
D000368:Aged; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D003110:Colonic Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D015897:Comorbidity; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011379:Prognosis; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results