Premium
Fast screening of depression in cancer patients: the effectiveness of the HADS
Author(s) -
CASTELLI L.,
BINASCHI L.,
CALDERA P.,
MUSSA A.,
TORTA R.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
european journal of cancer care
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.849
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1365-2354
pISSN - 0961-5423
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2354.2010.01217.x
Subject(s) - medicine , hospital anxiety and depression scale , depression (economics) , rating scale , cancer , oncology , anxiety , psychiatry , psychology , developmental psychology , economics , macroeconomics
CASTELLI L., BINASCHI L., CALDERA P., MUSSA A. & TORTA R. (2010) European Journal of Cancer Care
Fast screening of depression in cancer patients: the effectiveness of the HADS In oncology clinics, there is an increasing need for fast and accurate screening scales and procedures in order to evaluate cancer patients for depression. The present study investigated the comparative effectiveness in recognising depressed patients of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), a self‐report screening scale, and the Montgomery‐Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), a semi‐structured clinician‐rated scale, in 151 patients affected by mixed cancer pathologies. With the MADRS, 73.5% of the patients were identified as depressed, whereas the HADS identified 36.4% and 58.3% as depressed, using the cut‐offs of 11 and 8 respectively. The results suggest moderate agreement between the MADRS and the HADS when a cut‐off of 8 is used ( K ‐test: 0.44), while using a HADS cut‐off of 11 gave a significantly higher underestimation of depressed patients ( K ‐test: 0.29). In conclusion, the results suggest that the HADS can be useful as a sufficiently accurate first‐step screening tool for depression in mixed oncology settings.