Centre for Policy on Ageing



Psychometric behaviour of BDI in Alzheimer's disease patients with depression
Author(s)	A C Wagle, L W Ho, S A Wagle
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 15, no 1, January 2000
Pages	pp 63-69
Keywords	Dementia ; Depression ; Assessment procedures for mental patients ; Measurement.
Annotation	Psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and depression have not been fully evaluated. Item endorsement patterns may be distorted by the presence of AD. This was tested by applying the BDI to a sample of 129 subjects with probable AD without depression and to 57 subjects with both probable AD and depression. It was found that the BDI under-diagnoses depression in the context of AD. ROC (receiver operating curves) for total BDI and cognitive and somatic items subsets showed low sensitivity and low areas under the curve indices. Results suggest that the BDI is not an ideal test for measuring depression in AD. This may not result solely from the swing of the somatic item subset, but from other aspects which require further investigation. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-000419009 A
Classmark	EA: ENR: DA:4C: 3R
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.