Postnatal psychiatric morbidity: a validation study of the GHQ-12 and the EPDS as screening tools.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the validity of the 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in screening for the most common postnatal psychiatric morbidities (mood, anxiety and adjustment disorders).


METHODS
A two-phase cross-sectional study was designed. First, a sample of 1453 women visiting at 6 weeks postpartum completed the GHQ-12 and the EPDS questionnaires. Second, based upon EPDS outcomes, participants were stratified and randomly selected within each stratum for clinical evaluation [Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID)]. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used.


RESULTS
The concurrent validity was satisfactory (0.80). At optimum cut-off scores, both GHQ-12 and EPDS yielded very good sensitivity (80; 85.5) and specificity (80.4; 85.3), respectively. ROC curves showed that the performance of the EPDS (AUC=0.933) is slightly superior to that of GHQ-12 (AUC=0.904).


CONCLUSIONS
Both GHQ-12 and EPDS are valid instruments to detect postnatal depression as well as postnatal anxiety and adjustment disorders.
Navarro
Purificación
P
Unit of Perinatal Psychiatry and Gender Research, Hospital Clínic Universitari de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. lesteve@clinic.ub.es
Ascaso
Carlos
C
Garcia-Esteve
Lluïsa
L
Aguado
Jaume
J
Torres
Anna
A
Martín-Santos
Rocío
R
D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D011644:Puerperal Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D012372:ROC Curve; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires