What Is the Geriatric Depression Scale?

The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was created by Brank et al. In 1982 and is designed to screen for depression in the elderly. Evaluate the most relevant feelings of the elderly in a week.

Geriatric Depression Scale

Right!

The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was created by Brank et al. In 1982 and is designed to screen for depression in the elderly. Evaluate the most relevant feelings of the elderly in a week.

There are thirty items in the scale, including the following symptoms: low mood, reduced activity, irritability, withdrawal of painful thoughts, negative ratings of past, present and future.

Each item requires the respondent to answer "yes" or "no", and the response in parentheses after each item indicates depression, and the answer is consistent with one point.

The critical value of the scale is still in doubt, and it is recommended to use it for general screening purposes: a total score of 0-10 is normal; 11-20 is mild depression; 21-30 is moderately severe Depression.

The table has a higher correlation. In particular, GDS is a depression scale created for the elderly and standardized in the elderly. In the clinical evaluation of the elderly, it has a higher compliance rate than other depression scales. This advantage is even more obvious.

This scale is a dedicated depression screening scale for people over 56 years of age, not a diagnostic tool for depression. It takes about 15 minutes per test. The main clinical evaluation is the following symptoms of people over 56 years old: depression, reduced activity, irritability, withdrawal, and negative evaluation of past, present and standing up. However, symptoms such as decreased appetite and sleep disorders are normal for patients over 56 years of age. Using this scale can sometimes be mistakenly rated as depression. Therefore, those who score more than 11 points should be further checked.

1. The reliability of the GDS has been checked in two studies. One study was performed on 47 elderly people in the Bay Area of San Francisco who were roughly representative of residents of the entire Bay area in terms of race, education, and socioeconomic status; Another study used normal elderly (n = 20) and depressive elderly (n = 51) undergoing treatment. Brink et al. (1982) tested the first sample with 100 yes or no entries related to seven general manifestations of senile depression. The seven general manifestations are: physical attention, low mood, cognitive deficits, feelings of discrimination, impaired motivation, a lack of focus on the future, and lack of self-confidence. Correlation analysis was performed on 100 items and the total score, and 30 best related items were obtained. The second study used a 30-item GDS in conjunction with the Hamilton Depression Scale (HRDS) and the Zung Self-Depression Rating Scale (SDS). Brink et al. Reported that the average GDS score of normal people was 5 points, and the average score of depression patients was 19.2 points.

2. Internal consistency: Yesavage et al. (1983) tested the internal consistency of GDS with four indicators. (1) the median of the correlation coefficient of each item's score and the total score minus the item's score; (2) the average of the correlation between items; (3) the Cronbach's coefficient; The values of these four indicators are: 0.56, 0.36, 0.94 and 0.94.

3. Retest reliability: Yesavage et al. (1983) also reported that the retest correlation of 20 patients after a week of inspection was 0.85.

4. Aggregation validity: Brink et al. (1982) reported that the correlation coefficients between GDS and SDS and HRSD were 0.82. Yesavage et al. (1983) published a comparative study of GDS, SDS and HRSD in three samples with different levels of depression. Using diagnostic criteria for research (RDC, clinical assessment procedures) related to severe affective disorder, subjects were divided into normal (n = 40), mild depression (n = 26), and severe depression (n = 34). group. The analysis of variance found that the GDS scores of the three groups increased with the severity of depression, and the differences were significant. The correlation between the three quantities and the RDC diagnosis level was: GDS = 0.82, SDS = 0.69, and HRSD = 0.83. It seems that the relevance of GDS to clinical assessment is better than SDS and close to HRSD. The correlation between GDS and SDS was 0.84, and the correlation with HRSD was 0.83. Hyer & Blount (1984) found that the correlation coefficient between GDS and BDI in elderly psychiatric inpatients was r = 0.73. GDS is superior to BDI when judging patients without, moderate or severe depression. After removing patients with mild depression, if the multidisciplinary psychiatric diagnosis is used as the standard, the false positive and false negative rates of GDS are lower than BDI.

As mentioned above, compared with clinical evaluation, GDS has a higher compliance rate than BDI and SDS, at least in the elderly, suggesting that GDS is more suitable for the elderly than the general self-assessment scale.

GDS is a depression scale created for the elderly and standardized in the elderly, and it has undeniable advantages in this regard. This table can be used to screen for depression in the elderly, but its cut-off value remains questionable. It has been suggested that the following criteria can be used for general purposes: 0-10, normal; 11-20, mild depression; 21-30, moderate to severe depression. Weiss et al. (1986) reviewed the application of six different depression scales (GDS, HRSD, Geriatric Psychophysiological Complaint Questionnaire, SDS, BDI, and Depression Scale for Center for Research Research) in the elderly, especially the "old elderly" Case. The authors point out that of the 13 most important symptoms unique to elderly depressed people, the GDS rated six of them, more than any other scale.