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Depression Scale (DEPS) among suicide attempters
Author(s) -
Taiminen T. J.,
Saarijärvi S.,
Helenius H.,
Keskinen A.,
Korpilahti T.,
Salokangas R. K. R.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
acta psychiatrica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.849
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1600-0447
pISSN - 0001-690X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1996.tb09846.x
Subject(s) - depression (economics) , psychiatry , gold standard (test) , suicide prevention , psychology , poison control , scale (ratio) , clinical psychology , medicine , medical emergency , cartography , economics , macroeconomics , geography
The Depression Scale (DEPS), a new screening instrument for detecting depression in primary health care, was compared with the Hamilton Depression Scale (HDS) among 50 suicide attempters. Using the HDS as a gold standard, the positive and negative predictive values of the DEPS for the diagnosis of depression were 98% and 20%, respectively. The correlation between the total HDS scores and the total DEPS scores was 0.60. The DEPS may help general practitioners to detect depression among suicide attempters, but it should not be used to exclude depression.