title: A comparison of the Major Depression Inventory (MDI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in severely depressed patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We set out to examine the psychometric properties of the MDI in comparison to the BDI in a mixed group of patients with primary depression.
  
  
  METHODS
  At the Department of Biological Psychiatry in Vienna currently depressed inpatients with either a depressive or a schizo-affective disorder filled out both MDI and BDI on day of admission and at a time-point two weeks later during their treatment. Furthermore the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D) was administered by the treating clinician at both time-points.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total, 51 patients were included in the study. The non-parametric item response analysis was preferred to the classical Cronbach coefficient α as the latter is influenced by the number of items in a questionnaire. MDI obtained a Mokken analysis coefficient above 0.40, indicating unidimensionality. To determine external validity severely depressed patients with psychotic symptoms (N = 10) were compared to the remaining non-psychotic depressed patients (N = 41). Although BDI and MDI showed a lower score for psychotic than for non-psychotic inpatients, the standard deviations for both were greater for psychotic inpatients. On the intercorrelations between the different scales, MDI showed for all coefficients values above 0.70. On the other hand BDI and MDI both showed the same degree of linear relationship as the usual versions of HAM-D.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results demonstrate that the MDI had the highest coefficients values and was sufficient as a measure for depressive disorders in psychiatric patients.
authors: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Division of Biological Psychiatry, Medical University Vienna, Austria. anastasios.konstantinidis@meduniwien.ac.at
authors: Anastasios
authors: A
authors: Konstantinidis
authors: Klaus
authors: K
authors: Martiny
authors: Per
authors: P
authors: Bech
authors: Siegfried
authors: S
authors: Kasper
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001317:Austria; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult