title: Assessment of depression in medical patients: a systematic review of the utility of the Beck Depression Inventory-II.
abstract: To perform a systematic review of the utility of the Beck Depression Inventory for detecting depression in medical settings, this article focuses on the revised version of the scale (Beck Depression Inventory-II), which was reformulated according to the DSM-IV criteria for major depression. We examined relevant investigations with the Beck Depression Inventory-II for measuring depression in medical settings to provide guidelines for practicing clinicians. Considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria seventy articles were retained. Validation studies of the Beck Depression Inventory-II, in both primary care and hospital settings, were found for clinics of cardiology, neurology, obstetrics, brain injury, nephrology, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, oncology, and infectious disease. The Beck Depression Inventory-II showed high reliability and good correlation with measures of depression and anxiety. Its threshold for detecting depression varied according to the type of patients, suggesting the need for adjusted cut-off points. The somatic and cognitive-affective dimension described the latent structure of the instrument. The Beck Depression Inventory-II can be easily adapted in most clinical conditions for detecting major depression and recommending an appropriate intervention. Although this scale represents a sound path for detecting depression in patients with medical conditions, the clinician should seek evidence for how to interpret the score before using the Beck Depression Inventory-II to make clinical decisions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry (LIM-23), Medical School, University of São Paulo, São PauloSP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Yuan-Pang
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Clarice
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gorenstein
mesh_terms: D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D054928:Validation Studies as Topic