Centre for Policy on Ageing



Can we trust depression screening instruments in healthy 'old-old' adults?
Author(s)	Lea C Watson, Carmen L Lewis, Christine E Kistler
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 19, no 3, March 2004
Pages	pp 278-285
Source	http://www.interscience.wiley.com
Keywords	Depression ; Screening ; Good Health ; United States of America.
Annotation	In an educated and cognitively intact group of "old-old" Americans (age 75+, mean age 80), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression scale (CES-D) performed poorly in detecting both major and minor depression. One in five of the participants had significant depression as confirmed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-IV) evaluation. 12% had major depression and 7% had minor depression. Most participants had their first episode of either after age 60. Contrary to other studies evaluating the GDS and CES-D, this one suggests that the healthy old-old may require new screening interventions to detect clinically significant depression. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-040505215 A
Classmark	ENR: 3V: CD: 7T
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.